The Complete Ecotopia, Ernest Callenbach (Heyday, Berkeley, California)
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED; here are some bits that stood out for me …
from Ecotopia (1975)
“to have a driver on board to collect fares would cost more than the fares could produce” 14
[re public bicycles] “it is cheaper to lose a few bicycles than to provide more taxies or minibuses” 15
[re nitrogen-fixing crops, crop rotation, manure eliminating need for chemical fertilizers] 20
“They were literally sick of bad air, chemicalized foods, lunatic advertising.” 50
“Americans are … accustomed to believe that only economic and population growth can lead to improvement in life.” 67
So insane. Why would they think that unlimited population growth is feasible? Especially when the men regularly justify killing animals on the basis of ‘culling’ the herd?
from Ecotopia Emerging (1981)
“[In the 1970s] Federal funds shored up failing automobile corporations—which had proved unable to compete with Japanese firms in produce gas-efficient cars—instead of diverting them toward production of buses, trains, and other low-energy means of transportation.” 186
As a result, the U.S. (and Canada) is so far behind the rest of the world in this regard. No wonder they cling to their cars; they haven’t developed any alternatives. And they’ll cling to their cars, and their oil, until they’ve taken the whole planet down with them in CO2 emissions, heat waves, and fires.
Love the “No More!” list (p213-5); all so obvious, justifications so clear, and yet we’re nowhere near …
“Few Americans had had the eye-opening experience of car-free environments in parts of European cities or in the pedestrian malls that had been created in a few American cities.” 214
Yes, they so arrogantly believe they are the best country in the world; amazing, since most of them can’t even name five other countries. (Hell, many of them can’t even name ten other states in their own country.)
“We … think the economy should be made to serve the people, not the other way around. Our quality of life does not depend merely on the amount of goods we have access to. It depends on … All these are ‘goods’ that cannot be bought.” 271
“Nor does the Gross National Product measure only truly useful goods. A car crash, for instance, increases the GNP [and so is considered a good thing; similarly, people who get cancer because they increase medical-care expenditures…].” 271
So very insane.
“Americans have been consuming far more than our reasonable share of the resources in materials and energy which exist on the earth—40 percent of them, though we have only six percent of the people …” 272
And when their neighbor, with 1/10 of that 6% population, does not consume as much—we buy much less from the U.S. than they buy from us—we’re chastised, nay, penalized. Instead of admired for our responsible consumption. (Quite apart from why would they even expect us to buy as much as they do?)
“In the first half of the eighties, the net outflow of dollars to pay OPEC nations for oil amounted to the value of half the stocks and bonds listed on the New York Stock Exchange … the country had given away in order to maintain its car habit half of all the productive machinery, laboratories, land, buildings, transportation facilities, and food production resources accumulated by its corporations over the previous 200 years.” 336
“but they also cleared the land simply because trees constituted the hateful wilderness, which they felt it was their God-given mission to subdue.” 345
Explains a puzzling comment by a parent to a child after the child had helped with the leafblower to clear the leaves away: “There! All clean!”
Clean? Leaves are ‘dirty’?
“The land lost the absorbency it had had when forested, so run-off became rapid and great floods were common. … By the seventies, for each bushel of corn grown in Iowa, six bushels of soil eroded away; in eastern Washington, 20 pounds of topsoil were lost for every pound of wheat produced. … Rebuilding the soil, if feasible at all, would required decades of devoted effort.” 346
“Some argued that anti-car measures infringed on their personal freedom, which they equated with the untrammeled right to drive wherever and whenever and whatever they pleased.” 395
from Epistle to the Ecotopians (2012)
https://mondediplo.com/openpage/epistle-to-the-ecotopians
“Barring unprecedented revolutionary pressures, this is the actual future we face in the United States, too. … ” 535-6
Two pages of accurate prediction. Not so amazing. The writing was on the wall. But so many Americans can’t read. And refuse to listen to those who can. Again, the arrogance.
For example, “The U.S. … will stand out as the best-armed Third World country, its population ill-fed, ill-housed, ill-educated, ill-cared for in health, and increasingly poverty-stricken….”
Well, except for the 6 people who have become billionaires by blocking food, housing, education, and healthcare …
