Greater Good · 7 hours ago

Greater Good

When psychologist Elizabeth Dunn biked to work one morning and arrived in a better mood than she ever did fighting traffic, something clicked - the very actions that could help the planet were also the ones that made people happier. That insight sent her straight to her colleague Jiaying Zhao, a behavioral sustainability scientist, and together they've spent years building what they call a "happy climate approach," grounded in a simple but underused principle: positive emotions drive lasting change in ways that fear and shame cannot. "Almost everyone wants to act on climate change," Zhao observes, "and I think joy is one kind of powerful tool to bring everybody on board, instead of using the current narrative, which is divisive." Their research and new book, *Leave the Lights On*, reframe everyday decisions - what to eat, where to bank, how to travel, even how to arrange a refrigerator - not as sacrifices but as genuine opportunities for well-being. The quiet revelation at the heart of their work is that caring for the Earth and caring for oneself may never have been in conflict at all.