What if sustainability were a joyful project?

When we discuss sustainability and climate change, we often produce a long list of things to give up to save the world: less consumption, fewer journeys, less economic growth, less burning of fossil fuels. The list can start to sound like a thoroughly dull future defined by bans, restrictions, loss and sacrifice.

But what if sustainability is a joyful project? What if the transformations ahead hold opportunities to enrich our lives, strengthen communities and recover abilities that today's speed and consumer culture have pushed aside?

A slower pace could give us more attention. Less consumption could mean more creativity, cooperation and resourcefulness. Repairing and sharing could help bring skills, stories and relationships back into everyday life.

Homes and neighbourhoods designed around care could offer more connection, safety and wellbeing. Cities with fewer cars could give children more freedom, adults more movement, and everyone cleaner air and quieter streets.

Some of these changes could slow conventional economic growth; I would not claim otherwise. But would that necessarily be entirely bad? Why are we so preoccupied with growth, and so convinced that it measures prosperity and a good life? A society can score highly on production while many of us are exhausted, lonely and disconnected from the living systems that sustain us. Experience should have taught us that.

These thoughts are not an attempt to minimise the task ahead. I know it is complex and multifaceted. Major transformations usually are. But I allow myself to wonder what good, and what better possibilities, we could make of these changes.

Conventional ideas often measure prosperity by how quickly money, goods and resources move through the economy. HomeBeing asks whether life requires a different measure. A better one.

What if prosperity were measured in room to move, relationships and access to nature, clean air, healthy ecosystems, care for life and opportunities to participate in community?

Transformation can involve loss and difficulty while opening new possibilities. Joy does not diminish the seriousness of the task. It can give us strength and inspiration in difficult times.

Sustainability also concerns everything we might regain: time, attention, creativity, health, community and a living relationship with the world we belong to.