The thing is though, that GDP is correlated with all those good things he mentions. It is wealthy countries with high GDP that have higher quality education, time and interest for poetry, less corruption, improved child mortality, improved air quality, and more equal, stable marriages, than countries with low GDP. Countries with high GDP are also the ones that care about the environment. Getting from low GDP to high GDP can be messy, but once a country has high GDP, it starts caring more about the environment. A good example of this is China, who is much more concerned now about air quality and pollution, than it was a decade ago.