I recently listened to a Ted talk by Tshering Tobgay, Bhutan’s Prime Minister. It was perhaps the first time I have every truly believed that sustainability can trump economics.

Bhutan, as many of you may know, separated itself from the world by placing Gross National Happiness or GNH above Gross National Product or any other economic factor. They have extended this holistic approach to running a nation into sustainability, creating several programs that work to fund education, preserve their environment, and invest in clean energy.

So how is it that a country of barely 7 million people, with a GDP of $2 billion, make steps towards sustainability that confound the Western world, leaving them behind in a cloud of their own excuses? It seems to me they did just that, they stopped making excuses and started making plans instead. Granted Bhutan is at a significant advantage since they are already in the practice of disregarding money, and placing emphasis on other things.

Despite all the amazing things that Bhutan has managed to do, and the fact that they are not only carbon neutral, but providing a carbon sink for much of the surrounding area, there still feeling the effects of global warming. Their glacial lakes are pushing their banks, a potential disaster waiting to happen.

What Bhutan has managed to do is proof that it is not new technology, or new sustainable products that we desperately need, but a societal shift. A movement that once again places more value on people’s happiness than their bank account, and sees our beautiful environment not as something to be turned into economic gains but as an invaluable source of life, one that we should protect above all else.

I am not trying to pretend that this shift will be easy, but perhaps the current methods of trying to bring out the “true cost” of a product is still just putting a price tag on the planet, when really we need to move away from that rhetoric completely, showing the planet instead as an unquantifiable source of all life.

Bhutan is proving, once again, that it’s not the size that counts, but rather how you use it.

Watch the Ted talk here