After the chaos will come the development of the new human race: Hanley

Somewhere in the predictions about Earth being unable to support 3.7 billion more people by the end of the century, a Saskatoon author is able to be hopeful.

Paul Hanley's book ELEVEN, nominated for two 2015 Saskatchewan Book Awards, argues that a sustainable future for 11 billion people will require an ethical revolution that will wholly transform humankind.

He's presenting "11 reasons to be hopeful about the future (despite a lot of bad news about it)" at the University of Regina this afternoon.

The bad news, he said, is that according to an ecological footprint theory, humans are already over-taxing Earth's biocapacity by about 60 per cent and it will only get worse.

"To make the world work with that many people, I think we're really going to have to be a different kind of person," Hanley, 62, said Tuesday.

He said the transformation process will result in a new culture, a new agriculture and ultimately a new human race.

"Since the Industrial Revolution, we've developed a vision of what a human being is, which is highly materialistic, and I think we can develop a new vision, sort of reconstruct who we are as a people," Hanley said,

He can't predict exactly what the new human race will look like, but he said the change must be drastic - and should have started decades ago.

However, he has ideas for what sustainable traits will emerge: people will be more service oriented, more communal, less individually competitive and will have an agricultural focus on health.

But what about resistance from those who enjoy the comforts of materialistic living?

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After the chaos will come the development of the new human race: Hanley