by Paul Hanley
This book offers more than hope. It shares a vision and then outlines practical steps to achieve it. “Eleven” stands for the eleven billion people that the United Nations expects to be living on earth by the year 2100. The book explains how that can be achieved without undue hardship or injustice.
The author, Paul Hanley, is an environmentalist, a realist, and an excellent communicator. He starts off by describing our current situation and explaining why it is not sustainable. However, he says, since we the people are responsible for most of our problems, then we the people have the capacity to fix them.
The challenge is clear: we are using up our resources faster than we are replacing them. Some resources like oil, coal, and minerals are actually irreplaceable. Others, like topsoil, forests, and fish can be replaced if managed wisely. In any case, we cannot continue to grow indefinitely on a planet of fixed size.
Funnily enough, we have the ability to live within our means, even to sustain eleven billion people on this earth. Hanley lays out the economics. Vast amounts of human wealth is wasted on things that are unnecessary, useless, or even destructive. What we need to do is invest that wealth into what is necessary and constructive.
How can that happen? How do we make the switch? We need to change ourselves, to attain a higher level of morality. And we need to learn how to make those changes; we need to learn how to learn. He quotes a Chinese proverb:
If you are planning for a year, sow rice; if you are planning for a decade, plant trees; if you are planning for a lifetime, educate people.
Hanley points to several down-to-earth practical thinkers like Martin Nowak and Henry Stapp who are contributing to our understanding of human nature. They challenge the belief that we are helpless victims of nature, with no free will, forced to fight each other in a struggle to survive.
Instead, their research shows that we are the masters of our own destiny if we so choose. We really do have free will, even at the quantum level. And most of us are willing to trust others, at least initially. This trust gives benefits, leading to more trust. As trust grows, as we cooperate, we build societies and nations. Now we need to take this a step further. Rebuilding our world for 11 billion people will require new levels of trust and capacity based, according to Hanley, on a new morality.
The book ends with two examples of real-world communities that are putting these ideas into practice, and are achieving results. It seems the time for excuses is over. The vision is clear and doable. We need to act—and in fact act quickly—to provide a decent life for our children and their grandchildren.