Ecotopia Emerging
Encyclopedia
Ecotopia Emerging by Ernest Callenbach
is a fictionalized history of the events leading up to the secession
of Northern California
, Oregon
and Washington to form the steady-state, environmentalist nation of Ecotopia along the Pacific Coast
of the United States
. In 1975, Callenbach had published a utopian novel called Ecotopia
about the events; EE is the prequel, published in 1981. The EE story seems to take place in the 1990s; Callenbach assumes that the pro-business, anti-environmental Reagan
-era policies—already evident at the time of publication—will have persisted in the United States after Reagan's presidency.
Ecotopia has been extremely popular and influential. Although EE addresses the question of 'how to get there from here,' it has received much less attention. On its release, Publishers Weekly
reviewed it as a “young adult”
book.
Bolinas, California
, high school student Lou Swift finds a way to generate electricity cheaply from seawater in a solar cell
. However, she doesn’t understand how the cell works. She refuses to publish her results until she understands the science. Because she is determined to make the cell design freely available, she spurns corporate and academic offers to buy the cell design. Meanwhile, spies and burglars try to obtain her notes.
Vera Allwen is a California
state senator. Angered by an Eastern food corporation’s announcement it would stop selling fresh produce
, she and other politicians, artists and professionals form a new political party. It is decentralized
, environmentalist, and populist
. They create a platform and name it the Survivalist Party. As the book proceeds, they spread their ideas, coalition with like-minded people, and become a regional political force. Vera’s speeches are reprinted within the text. Some of their ideas come from a short novel called Ecotopia
, and the Party publishes a paper called "The Survivalist Way to Ecotopia." The Party creates a think tank
for environmentalist policies. When the Pacific Northwest states pass a special tax on cars to reduce car use, the U.S. Supreme Court
overturns it; public outrage along the Pacific coast helps tip the people of the region toward supporting the Survivalist Party.
When the Quebec
government offers to establish diplomatic relations, the Party starts thinking about independence. A nuclear accident
gives them the governorship of Washington State, and Northern California's refusal to keep supplying Southern California with water leads to the state splitting into two. An ardent secessionist claims to have planted dirty bomb
s in New York City
and Washington, DC, and threatens they will explode if the U.S. attacks the region. Bolinas declares itself independent of other governments. The Survivalist Party has infiltrated local units of the National Guard
, which are now sympathetic to the secessionists. The U.S. is too busy with a war in Brazil
to send troops to pacify Bolinas and its supporters. In a lucky coincidence, the U.S. helicopters massing on the Nevada border and preparing to attack the region are suddenly recalled to deal with a crisis in Saudi Arabia
, and secession seems likely to proceed.
Meanwhile, in the future Ecotopia, individuals move the local economy toward a more sustainable model. A collective sets up a solar remodeling business; a young man uses goats to mow lawns. Berkeley
creates car-free zones; other cities adopt them. A suburban tract is replanted as an orchard. Rural residents build a lightweight, cheap horse-drawn buggy
, and still
s to distill alcohol from farm waste. Eventually, a large part of the public is car-free and ready to take the final steps to a sustainable economy.
Lou finally discovers the key chemical that makes her solar cell work. She publishes her paper and people start building their own cells. With this breakthrough, the region will no longer be dependent for energy on the rest of the U.S. for imported fossil fuels or nuclear power. With this energy independence, the future nation of Ecotopia becomes a practical possibility.
These events occur against economic and political breakdown in the U.S.: corporate concentration, slashed government budgets and military adventurism abroad, aided by a compliant corporate media. The automobile habit
has essentially bankrupted the U.S. Refusing to develop alternative energy sources, “oil-hungry America lurched toward some unseen economic catastrophe.” At the end, the Saudi oil refineries have been bombed, and the U.S. military is caught up in a war in the Middle East
.
The Ecotopian storyline ends with the Party making Lou’s solar cell technology available to the public, and a constitutional convention
where the region decides to secede from the U.S. following the Quebec
-Canada
model.
The book Ecotopia begins about 20 years after secession, when the new nation is securely established. Neither book describes events in between, such as the political difficulties of secession, the economic dislocations and outmigration from the region, and the Helicopter War with the U.S. (referred to in Ecotopia).
Ernest Callenbach
Ernest Callenbach is an American writer. Life & Work =Born in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, he attended the University of Chicago, where he was drawn into the then 'new wave' of serious attention to film as an art form...
is a fictionalized history of the events leading up to the secession
Secession
Secession is the act of withdrawing from an organization, union, or especially a political entity. Threats of secession also can be a strategy for achieving more limited goals.-Secession theory:...
of Northern California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
, Oregon
Oregon
Oregon is a state in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States. It is located on the Pacific coast, with Washington to the north, California to the south, Nevada on the southeast and Idaho to the east. The Columbia and Snake rivers delineate much of Oregon's northern and eastern...
and Washington to form the steady-state, environmentalist nation of Ecotopia along the Pacific Coast
Pacific Northwest
The Pacific Northwest is a region in northwestern North America, bounded by the Pacific Ocean to the west and, loosely, by the Rocky Mountains on the east. Definitions of the region vary and there is no commonly agreed upon boundary, even among Pacific Northwesterners. A common concept of the...
of the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
. In 1975, Callenbach had published a utopian novel called Ecotopia
Ecotopia
Ecotopia: The Notebooks and Reports of William Weston is the seminal utopian novel by Ernest Callenbach, published in 1975. The society described in the book is one of the first ecological utopias and was influential on the counterculture, and the green movement in the 1970s and thereafter.-The...
about the events; EE is the prequel, published in 1981. The EE story seems to take place in the 1990s; Callenbach assumes that the pro-business, anti-environmental Reagan
Ronald Reagan
Ronald Wilson Reagan was the 40th President of the United States , the 33rd Governor of California and, prior to that, a radio, film and television actor....
-era policies—already evident at the time of publication—will have persisted in the United States after Reagan's presidency.
Ecotopia has been extremely popular and influential. Although EE addresses the question of 'how to get there from here,' it has received much less attention. On its release, Publishers Weekly
Publishers Weekly
Publishers Weekly, aka PW, is an American weekly trade news magazine targeted at publishers, librarians, booksellers and literary agents...
reviewed it as a “young adult”
Young adult literature
Young-adult fiction or young adult literature , also juvenile fiction, is fiction written for, published for, or marketed to adolescents and young adults, roughly ages 14 to 21. The Young Adult Library Services of the American Library Association defines a young adult as "someone between the...
book.
Plot summary
EE is mainly a history of the Ecotopian independence movement. The main characters are Vera Allwen, the leader of the Survivalist Party, and Lou Swift, a teenage physicist, along with their families and friends. Other characters are shown briefly as each one decides independently to break with the American status quo and begin living in an Ecotopian (low-tech, sustainable) fashion.Bolinas, California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
, high school student Lou Swift finds a way to generate electricity cheaply from seawater in a solar cell
Solar cell
A solar cell is a solid state electrical device that converts the energy of light directly into electricity by the photovoltaic effect....
. However, she doesn’t understand how the cell works. She refuses to publish her results until she understands the science. Because she is determined to make the cell design freely available, she spurns corporate and academic offers to buy the cell design. Meanwhile, spies and burglars try to obtain her notes.
Vera Allwen is a California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
state senator. Angered by an Eastern food corporation’s announcement it would stop selling fresh produce
Produce
Produce is a generalized term for a group of farm-produced goods and, not limited to fruits and vegetables . More specifically, the term "produce" often implies that the products are fresh and generally in the same state as where they were harvested. In supermarkets the term is also used to refer...
, she and other politicians, artists and professionals form a new political party. It is decentralized
Decentralization
__FORCETOC__Decentralization or decentralisation is the process of dispersing decision-making governance closer to the people and/or citizens. It includes the dispersal of administration or governance in sectors or areas like engineering, management science, political science, political economy,...
, environmentalist, and populist
Populism
Populism can be defined as an ideology, political philosophy, or type of discourse. Generally, a common theme compares "the people" against "the elite", and urges social and political system changes. It can also be defined as a rhetorical style employed by members of various political or social...
. They create a platform and name it the Survivalist Party. As the book proceeds, they spread their ideas, coalition with like-minded people, and become a regional political force. Vera’s speeches are reprinted within the text. Some of their ideas come from a short novel called Ecotopia
Ecotopia
Ecotopia: The Notebooks and Reports of William Weston is the seminal utopian novel by Ernest Callenbach, published in 1975. The society described in the book is one of the first ecological utopias and was influential on the counterculture, and the green movement in the 1970s and thereafter.-The...
, and the Party publishes a paper called "The Survivalist Way to Ecotopia." The Party creates a think tank
Think tank
A think tank is an organization that conducts research and engages in advocacy in areas such as social policy, political strategy, economics, military, and technology issues. Most think tanks are non-profit organizations, which some countries such as the United States and Canada provide with tax...
for environmentalist policies. When the Pacific Northwest states pass a special tax on cars to reduce car use, the U.S. Supreme Court
Supreme Court of the United States
The Supreme Court of the United States is the highest court in the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all state and federal courts, and original jurisdiction over a small range of cases...
overturns it; public outrage along the Pacific coast helps tip the people of the region toward supporting the Survivalist Party.
When the Quebec
Quebec
Quebec or is a province in east-central Canada. It is the only Canadian province with a predominantly French-speaking population and the only one whose sole official language is French at the provincial level....
government offers to establish diplomatic relations, the Party starts thinking about independence. A nuclear accident
Nuclear and radiation accidents
A nuclear and radiation accident is defined by the International Atomic Energy Agency as "an event that has led to significant consequences to people, the environment or the facility...
gives them the governorship of Washington State, and Northern California's refusal to keep supplying Southern California with water leads to the state splitting into two. An ardent secessionist claims to have planted dirty bomb
Dirty bomb
A dirty bomb is a speculative radiological weapon that combines radioactive material with conventional explosives. The purpose of the weapon is to contaminate the area around the explosion with radioactive material, hence the attribute "dirty"....
s in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
and Washington, DC, and threatens they will explode if the U.S. attacks the region. Bolinas declares itself independent of other governments. The Survivalist Party has infiltrated local units of the National Guard
United States National Guard
The National Guard of the United States is a reserve military force composed of state National Guard militia members or units under federally recognized active or inactive armed force service for the United States. Militia members are citizen soldiers, meaning they work part time for the National...
, which are now sympathetic to the secessionists. The U.S. is too busy with a war in Brazil
Brazil
Brazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people...
to send troops to pacify Bolinas and its supporters. In a lucky coincidence, the U.S. helicopters massing on the Nevada border and preparing to attack the region are suddenly recalled to deal with a crisis in Saudi Arabia
Saudi Arabia
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia , commonly known in British English as Saudi Arabia and in Arabic as as-Sa‘ūdiyyah , is the largest state in Western Asia by land area, constituting the bulk of the Arabian Peninsula, and the second-largest in the Arab World...
, and secession seems likely to proceed.
Meanwhile, in the future Ecotopia, individuals move the local economy toward a more sustainable model. A collective sets up a solar remodeling business; a young man uses goats to mow lawns. Berkeley
Berkeley, California
Berkeley is a city on the east shore of the San Francisco Bay in Northern California, United States. Its neighbors to the south are the cities of Oakland and Emeryville. To the north is the city of Albany and the unincorporated community of Kensington...
creates car-free zones; other cities adopt them. A suburban tract is replanted as an orchard. Rural residents build a lightweight, cheap horse-drawn buggy
Horse and buggy
A horse and buggy or horse and carriage refers to a light, simple, two-person carriage of the late 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries, drawn usually by one or sometimes by two horses...
, and still
Still
A still is a permanent apparatus used to distill miscible or immiscible liquid mixtures by heating to selectively boil and then cooling to condense the vapor...
s to distill alcohol from farm waste. Eventually, a large part of the public is car-free and ready to take the final steps to a sustainable economy.
Lou finally discovers the key chemical that makes her solar cell work. She publishes her paper and people start building their own cells. With this breakthrough, the region will no longer be dependent for energy on the rest of the U.S. for imported fossil fuels or nuclear power. With this energy independence, the future nation of Ecotopia becomes a practical possibility.
These events occur against economic and political breakdown in the U.S.: corporate concentration, slashed government budgets and military adventurism abroad, aided by a compliant corporate media. The automobile habit
Behavioral addiction
Behavioral addiction is a form of addiction which does not rely on drugs or alcohol. Increasingly referred to as process addiction or non-substance-related addiction ) behavioral addiction includes a compulsion to repeatedly engage in an action until said action causes serious negative consequences...
has essentially bankrupted the U.S. Refusing to develop alternative energy sources, “oil-hungry America lurched toward some unseen economic catastrophe.” At the end, the Saudi oil refineries have been bombed, and the U.S. military is caught up in a war in the Middle East
Middle East
The Middle East is a region that encompasses Western Asia and Northern Africa. It is often used as a synonym for Near East, in opposition to Far East...
.
The Ecotopian storyline ends with the Party making Lou’s solar cell technology available to the public, and a constitutional convention
Constitutional convention (political meeting)
A constitutional convention is now a gathering for the purpose of writing a new constitution or revising an existing constitution. A general constitutional convention is called to create the first constitution of a political unit or to entirely replace an existing constitution...
where the region decides to secede from the U.S. following the Quebec
Quebec
Quebec or is a province in east-central Canada. It is the only Canadian province with a predominantly French-speaking population and the only one whose sole official language is French at the provincial level....
-Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
model.
The book Ecotopia begins about 20 years after secession, when the new nation is securely established. Neither book describes events in between, such as the political difficulties of secession, the economic dislocations and outmigration from the region, and the Helicopter War with the U.S. (referred to in Ecotopia).
Comparison of Ecotopia Emerging and Ecotopia
As a prequel to Ecotopia, EE uses some of the same characters as Ecotopia, principally Vera Allwen and Marissa D’Amato (later the girlfriend of Ecotopia’s narrator). However, there are important differences between the books.- The format is different. Ecotopia is the account of a trip to Ecotopia by a U.S. reporter, William Weston, and is told entirely from his point of view. EE alternates a straightforward narrative history of the United States and the Survivalist Party with novelistic snapshots of key events in the lives of some future Ecotopians.
- Ecotopia was written in the middle 1970s, when American writers were trying to imagine how to reconstruct society after the Sixties1960sThe 1960s was the decade that started on January 1, 1960, and ended on December 31, 1969. It was the seventh decade of the 20th century.The 1960s term also refers to an era more often called The Sixties, denoting the complex of inter-related cultural and political trends across the globe...
revolutions. It focuses on the achieved Ecotopian society, not on the problems of the (remaining) United States. EE was published in 1981 and has a darker tone. It focuses as much on the dysfunctional U.S. political and economic system as it does on the actions of the future Ecotopians. Most of its ‘predictions’ for the U.S. future have turned out to be prescient, such as “From the eighties onward the business mentality triumphed.” (p. 42) - Ecotopia describes a steady-state society. Only the narrator changes as the book progresses. EE is a history; its characters, institutions and society change over time.
- Ecotopia has been criticized for only presenting life in Northern California. EE has a broader scope, and includes all three states.