From Fantasy to Fact : Ernest Callenbach’s Little Ecology Novel Proved Amazingly Prophetic

Ernest Callenbach is a professional editor. So in 1974 when he completed his fantasy novel entitled “Ecotopia”--in which citizens of Northern California, Oregon and Washington secede from the United States to form an ecologically stable nation because they are “sick of bad air and chemicalized foods”--he appraised the work objectively.

“I thought the book was OK--maybe not terrific, but good. But I couldn’t get it published,” says Callenbach, an editor at the University of California Press. “I had an agent in New York and he showed it around to major publishers and no one would take it. They all said, ‘Well, the ecology fad is over.’ ”

No one could see any hope for a little novel about a radical ecological experiment in which a female-led Survivalist political party, substituting recycling for conspicuous consumption, solves the problems of air and water pollution, traffic congestion, toxic waste and contaminated food.

But Callenbach, an eclectic intellectual (“he has a richly furnished mind,” says one friend) who grew up on a Pennsylvania farm and is a fanatical reader of science magazines, was deeply interested in what he saw as growing environmental problems and their technological linkage. So he published the book himself with some financial help from friends. They created Banyan Tree Books and printed 2,500 copies in January of 1975.

The soft-spoken Callenbach, 59, is not the type to say “I told you so,” but if he were, he might point out these validating developments:

“Ecotopia” started selling immediately and hasn’t stopped. It has become a classic for Bantam Books, which picked it up in 1977. Said Bantam New Age editor Toni Burbank: “It’s uncommon that a book should remain in print for so long. I think it pulled together an enormous number of considerations for the future of the country.” Today, domestic and foreign sales have passed 600,000.

* The book is in use in classrooms across the country. In San Diego, political scientist Kenneth Payne has used it for years in his Mesa Community College high school honors program. “I find it very useful,” he said. “It’s valuable in introducing students to the politics of the environment and helping them see how a concern for the environment can translate into social structure.”

* The ecology “fad,” rather than disappearing, appears on the verge of becoming a national priority, dramatized most recently by medical wastes washing up on East Coast beaches, reports of a thinning ozone layer and warnings of an impending global overheating called the “greenhouse effect.”

The imaginary society that Callenbach created is beginning to come to life, manifesting itself in contemporary activities ranging from “no growth” citizen protest movements to a growing passion for health food stores.

Clearly, it seems, Callenbach was predictive, a talent he acknowledged with a chuckle.

“My friends have accused me of prophecy,” he said in a recent telephone conversation from his Berkeley office. “I don’t want to be too immodest about it, but I was able, by some strange process, to put together some patterns that most people weren’t noticing at the time--and which evidently were there operating under the surface and are still there, for that matter.”

“In 1972, you could see a lot of bad stuff happening: the gas crunch, air pollution beginning, radioactive waste becoming an issue, water pollution.”

He describes himself as doing “systems thinking” as he looked at all those issues, submitting them to what he calls the “semi-humorous laws of ecology” which are:

* “Everything is connected to everything else.

* “Everything goes somewhere.

* “There is no such thing as a free lunch.”

Callenbach’s idea was to apply those laws to current American society and see what he would come up with.

“I had written ‘Living Poor With Style,’ which was aimed at the graduate student of the 1970s,” he added. “I had noticed that a lot of people around the country were scaling down.”

Callenbach accumulated a “big fat folder of clippings” with the intent of writing a major article condemning the wasteful way our country handles sewage. That’s when he discovered that there was no way to recycle sewage, partly because of the high toxic content of industrial waste. So he looked around the world to see if any other country did better with the problem sewage. “I was looking for a stable-state system and I couldn’t find one.

“I began to be interested in the ecological movement and appropriate technology movements; also people interested in windpower and in alternate modes of transportation. Nobody had put all these together.”

Film Quarterly Editor

Callenbach, who is also editor of the prestigious Film Quarterly, approached the subject, he said, like a movie critic, looking at the whole picture for its underlying linking themes and values.

“I thought I would try and visualize what an ecologically sane world would be like to fairly ordinary citizens like myself.”

The novel takes place in the year 1999 when a New York newspaper reporter, Will Weston, enters the independent nation of Ecotopia (formerly Northern California, Oregon and Washington). He is the first official visitor to cross its borders since it seceded in 1980, convinced that the United States was doomed by pollution, arms spending and government scandal and the only way to survive was to break away.

Weston’s news dispatches describe all phases of life in the new country, which is dedicated to “establishing stable state life systems,” where people recycle everything, cities are decentralized and connected by high-speed rail, cars are battery-powered and workers own and operate all businesses.

In order to maintain an ecological balance, Ecotopians have given up gasoline-powered cars, pre-prepared foods, many appliances and most luxuries including fashionable clothes, Weston reports.

The novel alternates the news dispatches with Weston’s personal diary in which he slowly adapts to a society in which people are in touch with their emotions, have considerable control over their own lives and decisions, in which ritualistic war games release repressed hostilities and forestry camps provide something like a spiritual relationship between humans and nature.

If this Ecotopian life style sounds like a fantasy, Callenbach nevertheless believes we continue to edge toward an ecological consciousness.

“Vast reaches of the American public now understand it,” he said. “Nobody wants to be a polluter anymore. It’s amazing how far we have come. I think it is really getting through to the national consciousness in a big way. With issues like the greenhouse effect, even people in high places are willing to admit that we have problems. It’s interesting to me that George Bush is making the environment a big political issue.”

Callenbach is beginning to see “a lot more people like me, toiling in similar vineyards.”

Last spring he was the keynote speaker for Vermont Gov. Madeleine Kunin’s conference entitled “Visions--Vermont Beyond the Year 2000.” And Friday he will lead a workshop on “The Ecology of a Ordinary Day” at a three-day conference of the Western Green Party near San Francisco.

“They will talk about large policy issues,” he said. “The Greens (who stand for a stable ecology and appropriate technology) are tip-toeing into politics” in the United States.

He senses that the United States is winding up a 20th-Century binge of “non-survival behavior.”

“There’s a wonderful old saying, that ‘Nature bats last.’ And that’s what’s beginning to happen now. Some of the dares we have taken--that we can get away by pretending that things we do don’t have consequences in the natural world--those are coming around to haunt us now.”

But Callenbach is an optimistic forecaster. Looking ahead, he predicts that by the year 2025, “We will be doing things the Ecotopian way to a considerable degree. . . . The American people learn when we have to. We are just now beginning to come into sight of some new vision and that’s what our survival in the long run depends on.”

And for the more immediate future, he has finished the first chapter of a book for young adults about “righteous work.”

It will be set in an Ecotopian-type lumber camp where, over the course of a summer, two teen-agers learn the values of cooperation, of taking care of the environment and of running a forest on a sustainable basis so they can live there forever. And in the process, said Callenbach, “They learn that work is not just something you do to save money for vacations. They learn about work that feels good to do even though it may be difficult, because you know it is making a contribution to the sustaining of the world.”

THE VISION OF ERNEST CALLENBACH

In 1974, Ernest Callenbach described life in a futuristic nation which had learned to live in harmony with the environment. Today, some of Callenbach’s fantasy systems are being taken seriously. In the first list below are environmental solutions we have adopted, at least to some degree; the second list is still fantasy. HAPPENING 1. Emphasis on personal physical fitness for people of all ages. 2. Video for education and entertainment, extensive cable programming. 3. Enthusiasm for miniaturized electronic devices such as radiotelephones. 4. More women in politics; political parties oriented toward cooperation, biological awareness. 5. Sizeable “amateur” publishing industry of artists and other specialized groups. 6. Portable “tube houses,” rather like mobile homes, for low-income housing. 7. Preventive medical care, neighborhood clinics, holistic health, cradle-to-grave insurance. 8. Search for non-polluting energy sources; utility companies push conservation. 9. Decentralization of urban areas into minicities built around “core” stores and shops. 10. At work, flex-time, shared decision-making, shift toward small businesses. 11. Growing awareness throughout society that “small is beautiful.” NOT HAPPENING 1. In homes and restaurants, recycle bins marked for metal, glass, paper and plastic. 2. Nationwide system of 225 m.p.h. magnetic suspension trains traveling between cities. 3. “Car-free” zones within cities; people use electric taxis, minibuses and free bicycles. 4. Buildings rarely painted since paints are based on lead, rubber, or plastics which do not decompose. 5. Most clothing is cotton or wool; producing synthetics requires too much electric power and water. 6. Biological controls for insects have replaced herbicides and insecticides. 7. All garbage and sewage recycled into organic fertilizer and applied to the land. 8. Sports are individual; there is no spectator baseball, football or basketball. 9. Standardization of basic consumer items such as bath towels, which come in white only. 10. Lumbering and tree planting are major endeavors, for ecology and to supply lumber and paper needs.