Ecotopia

[XemaSab]

SOMETIMES a book, or an idea, can be obscure and widely influential at the same time. That’s the case with “Ecotopia,” a 1970s cult novel, originally self-published by its author, Ernest Callenbach, that has seeped into the American groundwater without becoming well known.

The novel, now being rediscovered, speaks to our ecological present: in the flush of a financial crisis, the Pacific Northwest secedes from the United States, and its citizens establish a sustainable economy, a cross between Scandinavian socialism and Northern California back-to-the-landism, with the custom — years before the environmental writer Michael Pollan began his campaign — to eat local.

White bicycles sit in public places, to be borrowed at will. A creek runs down Market Street in San Francisco. Strange receptacles called “recycle bins” sit on trains, along with “hanging ferns and small plants.” A female president, more Hillary Clinton than Sarah Palin, rules this nation, from Northern California up through Oregon and Washington.

“ ‘Ecotopia’ became almost immediately absorbed into the popular culture,” said Scott Slovic, a professor at the University of Nevada, Reno, and a pioneer of the growing literature-and-the-environment movement. “You hear people talking about the idea of Ecotopia, or about the Northwest as Ecotopia. But a lot of them don’t know where the term came from.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/14/fashion/14ecotopia.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1

[HeresyLives]

1. Nine Nations of North America.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nine_Nations_of_North_America

Also prominent in this book from 1981.

[villager]

3. we're overdue for the break-up...

n/t

[Nay]

2. I've owned a copy of this book since its publication. I've always wanted

to live in Ecotopia! If you haven't read it, do so. Also read the book Callenbach wrote after Ecotopia -- called Ecotopia Emerging, I think.

The Ecotopians keep the rest of the US -- now an ecological and social mess -- at bay by letting the US know they had a few nukes, and invasion would not be a good idea.

[hunter]

4. I hated that book.

One world. One People.

[XemaSab]

7. .

:thumbsup:

[ConcernedCanuk]

5. There's a preview version available at Google books

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Good timing - I just finished my last library book an hour ago

Read on at Ecotopia: A Google book preview

There's a little "Full Screen" button at the top of the window for easier reading/scrolling

[depakid]

6. An embarrassingly long time ago

We were assigned Callenbach, Schumacher's "Small is Beautiful" and an obscure book that I've since lost called "Self Reliant Cities" to read, along with the usual undergraduate type textbook.

The exams covered all of the material- with a couple of open ended essays about the future.

It sure would be interesting if someome kept those things in a file somewhere.

[XemaSab]

8. Ask my mom about "keeping things in a file somewhere"

:hide:

-Xema, who still has her college notebooks in the garage. :hide:

[hunter]

9. I've kept all that stuff. It's in my boxes of dread in the garage. It scares me.

I've met Callenbach, studied Schumacher intensely, and remember Garret Hardin? He used to piss me off so much I once called him a racist ass to his face. (Well okay, my words were a little bit more measured than that, but not by much...)