"Standard of living" can be a relative term that focuses primarily on goods and income; shifting the discussion to include leisure, safety, cultural resources, social life, mental health, environmental quality issues and other 'quality of life' measures can help to realign the discussion and enable the refocusing of the goals people set for themselves and their communities.

It absolutely can - but it isn't an easy reset. That is, most of the socio-cultural benefits you achieve work best if everyone in a given society is doing the same thing. So we have to lower economic standards of living with the promise of other returns later on (there are exceptions, but in general, for example, these changes work best on a societal level).

Again, I think we can do it - but while I think an articulation of quality of life benefits is important and useful, we should pretend that there's no cost involved to the people we're talking about. The simple truth, however, is that we don't have a choice.

Sharon

Go deflation!

Someone had put it as shifting from a consumption-based lifestyle to an experience-based lifestyle. Collecting good memories rather than things.