The Economics of Happiness, a new film by the International Society for Ecology and Culture (ISEC), opens with the claim that we are facing an environmental crisis, an economic crisis and a crisis of the human spirit. Its subsequent analysis lays the blame at the door of government-sponsored economic globalisation. Though this modern trend is promoted as a means to end poverty and bring the world together, the film argues that it’s really about profit and has worsened nearly every problem the world faces – ethnic conflict, climate change, financial instability and depression.

According to the director of ISEC and the film, Helena Norberg-Hodge, The Economics of Happiness grew out of her book (and film), Ancient Futures, which describes the disastrous effects of globalisation on India’s Ladakh region. “There was a lot of interest in Ancient Futures”, she says. “People told me again and again that it was their story, too.”

The first half of The Economics of Happiness is predominantly devoted to describing ‘eight inconvenient truths’ about globalisation: that it makes us unhappy since material affluence undermines community, and consumerism causes us to measure ourselves against unattainable lifestyles; that corporations are raising our children, handing out ‘packaged selves’ and deciding what they want to eat and wear and purchase; that globalisation ruins local ecosystems since consumer culture is increasingly urban and resource-intensive; that it adds to climate change as goods (unnecessarily) travel ever farther to reach us; that it threatens livelihoods and takes small farmers as its first victims (forcing them to head city-ward to become sources of cheap labour); that it increases conflict as different ethnic groups are forced into competition for scarce resources in crowded cities; that it’s built on handouts to big business – only subsidies to fossil fuel corporations, nuclear power plants, monoculturalist farmers and so on make them possible; and that it’s based on false accounting as the focus is on growth, but, perversely, GDP goes up with economic activity resulting from oil spills, war, cancer and other disasters.

But it’s not all doom and gloom. Norberg-Hodge noted at the London premiere that, yes, most of the problems are linked, but then so are the solutions. The key, the film argues, lies not in self-deprivation and turning away from the world, but in localisation, removing benefits to large corporations and creating sustainable, local economies where money is a servant rather than a master and a sense of community can flourish. The reasons are simple: local, smaller-scale farming improves the environment and provides more jobs and more food per acre; local businesses retain three times as much wealth within the community as chains; and local, renewable energy creates two to four times more jobs than non-renewable, state-sponsored fossil fuels. And, what’s more, as Norberg-Hodge notes: “We could have a better lifestyle than what we’ve grown accustomed to, better in that there would be more leisure and there would be more community.”

The film offers evidence that this is already happening with initiatives like local food movements in San Francisco and Detroit, hands-on education projects in Japan and the worldwide Transition movement. Significantly, the pursuit of localism is not confined to just a few dreamers; encouragingly, Norberg-Hodge notes: “Everywhere I go, I find wonderful people doing wonderful work that’s a testimony to the fact that many people, I think the majority, would like to see a better balance with the environment and between urban and rural.”