And what were doing when we burn fossil fuels, is that we are taking carbon that was buried under the earth over the course of hundreds of millions of years, and we are transferring it back up into the atmosphere. So were basically running geological history backwards and at a very high speed. Were taking a process that took hundreds of millions of years to run in one direction, and were running it in the other direction in a matter of centuries. And if you were an alien and you came to visit the earth, you could easily conclude that what were doing, that the fundamental purpose of modern industrialized society, is to affect this transfer as quickly as possible. To see how much carbon we can get out of the ground and put up into the air and how fast we can do it. And thats a look at some of the chicago tribunes top books for 2014. To link to the full list and to see other publications selections, visit booktv. Org. Okay, now its time for hillary. You wrote that she captured your attent
The government of bhutan, i should say the king of bhutan about 30 years ago realized that a process of development, of economic development, was great. It would pull millions of people out of poverty. People wouldnt starve to death, but it wasnt enough for human flourishing. So instead of counting narrowly the amount of money people had per capita, he had the idea of trying to measure the amount of happiness. He started an index called Gross National happiness. Thats wher he started an index called Gross National happiness. That is where the expression comes from. Host what did he find . Guest a lot of measures of Economic Growth are great and the determinate for living the good life but not sufficient so cultural integrity, family values, being able to maintain ones faith in god, these other things people need for flourishing lives and in so doing, developing country has a lot of lessons. Host can you measure happiness the economic success . Guest no. We can find predetermined for a
Less likely to be happy. And some of the most miserable places in the world are places where people die of starvation and preventable diseases. Once you get beyond basic subsistence, the four things that bring happiness are faith, family, friends and work. Those are the things we have to keep in mind those are part of human flourishing. Host from your book Gross National happiness, this is a book about americas happiness. Doing sums across our population, can we say that the United States is a happy country . Whats your answer to that question . Guest the answer is generally, yes. Now theres so many indices of which country is happier than another and theyre generally not reliable. And part of the reason is because different cultures answer the question differently. So just getting a survey how happy are you, youre going to find that countries that have germanic languages answer the question different than those with romance languages, for example. Its that, its really that ridiculous.
Life, but they werent sufficient and so some of the things of cultural integrity, of family values, of being able to maintain ones faith, ones faith in god, that these are the things people needed for a truly flourishing life. And in so doing in a developing country, had a lot of lessons for the rest of us. Host can you measure happiness via economic success . Guest no. You can find some predeterminants for having a relatively good life by looking at economic indicators, but that doesnt get you far enough. There are really four things that can lead us to happiness and they dont involve money per se. Let me back up for a second peter. Money, one of the things that we find is enwhen people are poor and that when people are poor and they have deprivation and deciding whether or not to pay for medicine or food theyre less likely to be happy. And some of the most miserable places in the world are places where people die of starvation and preventable diseases. Once you get beyond basic subsi
They got a very you know tough, but fair view of the president. And they had a contented rid owe that their audience would enjoy mplt and, so its worked for them. And other people have, you know, other out lets on different sorts of proposalings. But these are Media Companies. And they have different theyre going to engauge their audience. Were those really Vice President s bidens chains . I dont think they were actually the Vice President. But if it turns out they were the Vice President , i will stweet off the answer when i get to the white house. Any regrets . No, it was fun. People see the president. If youre watching the news,hes standing biepd the president taurking about ebola or in some big fight about funding security. And its like, you know during the Campaign People got to see the other side of him. I think its important that people have some fun with it. We dont have to take ourselves so seriously all of the time. And so i thought it was great. And the president also recent