Ecotopia Emerging
Paperback cover
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| Author | Ernest Callenbach |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Novel |
| Published | 1981 (Banyan Tree Books) |
| Media type | Print (hardback & paperback) |
| Pages | 326 |
| ISBN | (hardback) 0-9604320-3-5 (paperback) |
| OCLC | 7596835 |
| 813/.54 19 | |
| LC Class | PS3553.A424 E3 |
| Preceded by | Ecotopia |
Ecotopia Emerging (EE) 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.
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, 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.
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Wikipedia