Satisfaction from conservation activities in North America

Abstract

One must avoid equating quality-of-life and sense of well-being with economic standard of living. It turns out that the North American public is concerned about intangible as well as tangible sources of well-being. In fact, a shift towards deriving one's well-being from intangible sources would seem an adaptive response to a world facing deep energy and material descent and the same time it deals with the consequences of past climate disruption. Despite the common-sense nature of the findings reported here, their application as a coping strategy is often overlooked. Clearly, human well-being can be increased in many non-economic ways. Due to the plurality of human satisfaction, people have the potential to improve their quality of life even if they have difficulty growing, or even maintaining, their economic status. For this potential to be realized, however, people must be able to become involved in their environment: they must be able to take actions to explore and to experiment, on a daily basis. They must, in short, experience the environment as supportive of their concern to participate and avoid wastefulness. Fortunately, our settlements can be designed and managed in ways that enhance environmental supportiveness. In fact, prefiguring supportive environments may be vital to easing our transition to an energy and material-constrained existence.