Ectopia

By Ernst Callenbach

Ectopia Emerging is a Utopian novel, written in the form of news reports and a diary kept by a journalist. New York Times-Post reporter Will Weston is sent to give a first-person report on the Republic of Ecotopia, formed when Washington State, Oregon and Northern California seceded from the USA to create a "stable-state" humanitarian ecosystem: the perfect balance between human beings and the environment. Now, twenty years later, the isolated, mysterious Ecotopia welcomes its first officially sanctioned American visitor. The nations have been belligerents during that time because of the attempt of the US to unsuccessfully stop the secession.

The somewhat skeptical Weston is at various times impressed, horrified, and overwhelmed by Ecotopia's strange practices. These include employee ownership of farms and businesses, a twenty-hour work week, almost fanatical elimination of pollution, "mini-cities" that eliminate overcrowding, and extreme devotion to trees.  The president of the nation is a woman. Ritual war games are designed to reduce male aggression. The interspersion of Weston's personal thoughts and his articles sent back to New York are interesting and present the contrasting views of Weston the "journalist" versus Weston the "man". Callenbach does not have Weston present the nation as a complete paradise and balances the American perspective with Ectopian attitudes. The description of America in terms of pollution, inequity, corporate malfeasance and foreign wars is not much difference than the actual situation of the country in the early 21^st century.

In Ecotopia, people are very free, relaxed. In San Francisco, roads and traffic have been replaced by parks and newly ubiquitous bikes. The internal combustion engine is outlawed. Callenbach looks at many areas in his book: including high-speed train travel, car-less cities, sewerage treatment, organic farming, the arts, the elimination of all commercialized sports, the health-care system, education and schools, worker controlled business enterprises, a new and fairer tax system, alternative energy sources like Solar, Wind and Tidal power, and many other subjects. Corporations have been replaced by collaborative enterprises owned by the participants. Only fully recyclable plastics are permitted.

The Nation of Ecotopia is an isolated geopolitical entity , outside the political and technological sphere of the rest of the world. Contrast this to the current mania for "globalization" pitting nation against nation in trade warfare, if not actual conflict. Callenbach presents Ecotopia as a model of small-nation efficiency and cohesiveness.

But even more interesting is the way that Ecotopian society restructures social relationships. People live and work together in various types of small communities, providing a village form of companionship missing from the industrialized world. They have also found a freedom of emotional and physical expression, key aspects of the spirit of communities. It extends beyond the economic or political system, into the area of  interpersonal relations - the psychology of everyone,in love, relations with Nature, etc.

The main point of Ecotopia, is to ask the simple question: What if?  This book is an exciting comprehensive, positive vision of an ecologically sustainable and humane word. None of the happy conditions in Ecotopia are beyond the technical means and resources of a modern society.