Ecotopia - Softcover

Ernest Callenbach

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0861040198 ISBN 13: 9780861040193

Publisher: Pluto Press, 1978

Synopsis

The impressive, environmentally benign energy, homebuilding & transportation technology described by Callenbach in Ecotopia was based on research findings published in such journals as Scientific American. The author's story was woven using the fiber of technologies, lifestyles, folkways & attitudes that were being reflected from real-life experience in the pages of, for example, the Whole Earth Catalog & its successor CoEvolution Quarterly, as well as being depicted in newspaper stories, novels & films. The main ideas for Ecotopian values & practices were based on actual experimentation taking place in the American West. To draw an example, the fictional Crick School was based upon Pinel School, an alternative school located outside Martinez, CA, & attended by Callenbach's son.
The author’s Ecotopian concept doesn't reject high technology, but members of his fictional society prefer to demonstrate a conscious selectivity of technology, so that not only human health & sanity might be preserved, but also social & ecological well being. Interestingly, Callenbach’s story anticipated the development & liberal usage of videoconferencing.
During the 1970s when Ecotopia was written & published “many prominent counterculture & new left thinkers decried the consumption & overabundance that they perceived as characteristic of post-WWII America”. The citizens of Ecotopia shared a common aim: they were looking for a balance between themselves & nature. They were “literally sick of bad air, chemicalized food & lunatic advertising. They turned to politics because it was finally the only route to self-preservation.” In the mid-20th century as “firms grew in size & complexity citizens needed to know the market would still serve the interests for those it claimed to exist”. Ecotopia targets the fact that many people did not feel the market & government were serving them in the way they wanted them to. This book was “a protest against consumerism & materialism, among other aspects of American life”.

About this title

From the Publisher

"Callenbach gives us a vivid, comprehensive, positive vision of an ecologically sustainable world. essential reading for all who care about the earth's future."--Fritjof Capra, author of the Tao Of Physics and the Tuming Point.

"A classic of earth consciousness."--Denis Hayes, Earth Day.

Ecotopia was founded when northern California, Oregon, and Washington seceded from the Union to create a "stable-state" 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: New York Times-Post reporter Will Weston. Like a modern Gulliver, the skeptical Weston is by turns impressed, horrified, and overwhelmed by Ecotopia's strange practices: employee ownership of farms and businesses, the twenty-hour work week, the fanatical elimination of pollution, "mini-cities" that defeat overcrowding, devotion to trees bordering on worship, a woman-dominated government, and bloody, ritual war games. Bombarded by innovative, unsettling ideas, set afire by a relationship with a sexually forthright Ecotopian woman, Weston's conflict of values intensifies-and leads to a startling climax.

"None of the happy conditions in Ecotopisa are beyond the technical or resource reach of our society."--Ralph Nader

From the Inside Flap

"Ecotopia was founded when northern California, Oregon, and Washington seceded from the Union to create a "stable-state" 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: "New York Times-Post reporter Will Weston.
Like a modern Gulliver, the skeptical Weston is by turns impressed, horrified, and overwhelmed by Ecotopia's strange practices: employee ownership of farms and businesses, the twenty-hour work week, the fanatical elimination of pollution, "mini-cities" that defeat overcrowding, devotion to trees bordering on worship, a woman-dominated government, and bloody, ritual war games. Bombarded by innovative, unsettling ideas, set afire by a relationship with a sexually forthright Ecotopian woman, Weston's conflict of values intensifies-and leads to a startling climax.

Edition details

• Publisher: Pluto Press
• Publication date: 1978
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0861040198
• ISBN 13: 9780861040193
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 176