Ecotopia Emerging Author:Ernest Callenbach This "prequel" to Callenbachs classic Ecotopia dramatizes the rise and triumph of a powerful American movement to preserve the earth as a safe, sustainable environment. The story springs from harsh realities. Toxic contamination of air, water, and food has become intolerable. Nuclear meltdowns threaten. Military spending burdens the econ... more »omy. Politicians squabble over outdated agendas while the country declines. But then dedicated people begin to respond in their own ways to the crisis, and fresh hope arises. A brash physics student, Lou Swift, invents a unique solar cell that will end dependence on polluting fossil energy. Marissa DAmico decides to devote her life to the restoration of clear-cut and eroded forests. Her mother Laura organizes a commando group of cancer victims to disable plants making carcinogenic chemicals. A distinguished but disillusioned legislator, Vera Allwen, organizes a new grassroots party working toward a survival-oriented future. Joining with thousands of others, they take their lives into their own handsfighting the corporate control that endangers their personal survival along with that of the earth. A panorama of history about to happen, Ecotopia Emerging weaves many individual destinies into an absorbing epic: the birth of a new nation.« less
First published in 1981, this book is as important today as it was then, perhaps more so, as we see the environmental mess our nation and planet have become.