In Search of Low Carbon Joy

Co-Authors Dr. Jiaying Zhao and Dr. Elizabeth Dunn I’ve been following Liz Dunn’s happiness research for a while, and now she has co-written a new book, Leave the Lights On: How Joyful Decisions Can Save Our Species (Penguin Random House), about how joy could be the missing weapon in our fight against climate change. Here we sit down for a Q&A about her work. Jessa: So you and Jiaying Zhao, colleagues at University of British Columbia, have co-written a book. What are your respective research foci and how do they fit together in this collaboration? Liz: I’m a happiness researcher, and my work focuses on how to optimize our use of resources to maximize happiness. So time, money, technology—I studied AI and smartphones and things like that, and then I got interested in carbon as another one of these. In this case, we don’t want to create too much of it. JZ is one of the world’s leading experts on the behavioural side of climate change. So, how do we change human behaviour in a way that…