How increasing your happiness can help solve climate change (w/ Jiaying Zhao and Elizabeth Dunn)

How to Be a Better Human

The conversation around climate change is often bleak and terrifying, but it doesn’t have to be that way, says climate behavior scientist Jiaying Zhao, or JZ. In this episode, JZ and happiness researcher Elizabeth Dunn join Chris to discuss why we need to account for happiness in climate solutions. JZ and Elizabeth argue since happiness is contagious, making happiness-driven decisions go further in influencing behavioral change than fear-based tactics. They also talk about an anesthetic gas that releases more carbon than CO2 and why you should google if your bank is investing money in fossil fuels.


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For the full text transcript, visit go.ted.com/BHTranscripts


Fill out our survey at bit.ly/BHSurvey6

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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The conversation around climate change is often bleak and terrifying, but it doesn’t have to be that way, says climate behavior scientist Jiaying Zhao, or JZ. In this episode, JZ and happiness researcher Elizabeth Dunn join Chris to discuss why we need to account for happiness in climate solutions. JZ and Elizabeth argue since happiness is contagious, making happiness-driven decisions go further in influencing behavioral change than fear-based tactics. They also talk about an anesthetic gas that releases more carbon than CO2 and why you should google if your bank is investing money in fossil fuels.


Featured guest



Connect with the team


For the full text transcript, visit go.ted.com/BHTranscripts


Fill out our survey at bit.ly/BHSurvey6

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

2026-08-17 41 min
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