As a physicist and long time environmental activist, it has become apparent that the decline of Critical Thinking in our society has coincided with popular support of palliative solutions to our energy problems. Few proponents of renewable energy schemes are bothering to use scientific...

This article examines the future of our petroleum-based economy in light of the voluminous debates over Peak Oil and includes the perspectives of the Western multinational oil companies themselves. The article surveys the Peak Oil discussions and the media campaigns of the major oil companies...

Using data from the 2010 China Family Panel Studies, this study investigates the association between commute time and subjective well-being in a sample of 16- to 65-year-old employees in urban China. We find evidence that a longer commute time is associated with lower levels of both life...

Existing studies that evaluate the impact of pollution on human beings understate its negative effect on cognition, mental health, and happiness. This paper attempts to fill in the gap via investigating the impact of air quality on subjective well-being using China as an example. By matching a...

This paper studies the impact of six main air pollutants on three key dimensions of subjective well-being (SWB) - life satisfaction, hedonic happiness and mental health. We match a nationally representative survey in China with local air quality and rich weather conditions according to the exact...

In this paper, we test the conventional wisdom in developing countries of 'more children, more happiness' by exploiting the cohort and provincial variations of elderly parents exposed to the one-child policy in China. Using nationally representative survey data from the 2015 China Health and...

In many societies, parents prefer sons over daughters, but the well-being effects of child gender, especially in later life, are less studied. Using the latest two waves of the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS), this paper evaluates the impacts of having daughters on older...

China has embarked on an ambitious and unprecedented programme of energy reform and climate change mitigation. Yet the motivations for this important shift remain unclear. This paper surveys key central government documents and articles by China's leading energy academics to investigate the...

If society's goal is to increase people's feelings of well-being, economic growth in itself will not do the job. Full employment and a generous and comprehensive social safety net do increase happiness. Such policies are arguably affordable not only in higher income nations but also in countries...