Essay On Ecotopia

From the first ecological utopian novel that tackles a strict ecological array, Ecotopia is a novel that was written by Ernest Callenbach and published in 1975 that gives a perspective on environmental utopian projection. The story portrays a society that seceded from a nation to build its own eco-friendly environment. Ecotopia is a small nation that comprises mostly the Northwestern part of the United States that includes Northern California, Washington and Oregon. These states deliver most of the agricultural and other products in the U.S. such as fruits and vegetables, wine, lumber, paper and cotton (Callenbach, 1975, p. 4). Hence, when these three states separate itself to the U.S., the Americans started to experience shortage of supplies which caused a sudden economic depression in their country while the Ecotopians still continuously progressed on their own. For these reason, Americans became curious on what is going on in Ecotopia. With the approval of the president of the United States, they decided to sent out someone to go and investigate what is happening in that country. They sent out William Weston, a New York’s Times- Post internal affair reporter. The novel was arranged and narrated as a written journal and a report of Weston that details Ecotopians’ way of life in terms of economic government, philosophy, culture, agricultural and industrial infrastructure.

Differences in Culture and Philosophy

The culture and philosophy of Ecotopia is based on oneness with nature and every action that they take must be based on their “stable-state system.” Thus, this system is conceptualized to promote an eco-friendly environment which gives way to the idea that everything that is produced in this country can make an impact w...

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...working on due to the last recession. I was also wondering how issues had been resolved in Ecotopians’ way as decision making is more likely to be a consensus rather than a rationalize and organize approach.

I believe that if we are going to use Ecotopia as an environmental model with Callenbach’s approach, we can somehow achieve what our today’s society needs; that is to have an eco-friendly environment where people are disciplined to take moderation in the consumption of the nature and start recycling and reuse things to ensure our future’s use of what we still have. If we are going to analyze the whole story of Ecotopia and apply it in our modern society, I must say that it will not be that easy to implement such rules and changes on this novel. However, I believe that in gradual time with smart plans and proper actions, we can somehow attain what Ecotopia is.