By Ernest Callenbach
This piece was originally published in Home! A Bioregional Reader, edited by Van Andruss, Christopher Plant, Judith Plant, and Eleanor Wright, New Society Publishers, copyright 1990.
And so the group sought a shared vision they could hope to transmit to the people at large: a vision of a society that would take long-term care of its natural resources the way a responsible farmer takes care of productive fields. A society that would protect members of the human species but also all others. A society that would arrange its institutions to encourage people to respect each other and work with each other, rather than working against each other. A society that recognized the unbearable fearfulness of uncontrolled hazards to life— whether they were nuclear or chemical. In short, a society that would feel safe and free, a society that an uprooted, exploited people could learn to call home….
Ernest Callenbach (1929-2012) was a writer and editor. He worked for the University of California Press from 1955 to 1991. His interest in environmentalism grew out of his work frequently editing their Natural History Guides. He is the author of several books on ecology and sustainability, most notably 1975’s Ecotopia, which presented the belief that technology could be successfully integrated with humanity and the environment and anticipated some later developments in the real world.
