Ecotopia (11 page)

Our economists would surely find the Ecotopian lumber industry a labyrinth of contradictions. An observer like myself can come only to general conclusions. Certainly Ecotopians regard trees as being alive in almost a human sense—once I saw a quite ordinary-looking young man, not visibly drugged, lean against a large oak and mutter “Brother Tree!” And equally certainly, lumber in Ecotopia is cheap and plentiful, whatever the unorthodox means used to produce it. Wood therefore takes the place that aluminum, bituminous facings, and many other modern materials occupy with us.

An important by-product of the Ecotopian forestry policies is that extensive areas, too steep or rugged to be lumbered without causing erosion, have been assigned wilderness status. There all logging and fire roads have been eradicated. Such areas are now used only for camping and as wildlife preserves, and a higher risk of forest fire is apparently accepted. It is interesting, by the way, that such Ecotopian forests are uncannily quiet compared to ours, since they have no trail-bikes, all-terrain vehicles, airplanes overhead, nor snowmobiles in the winter. Nor can you gel around in them rapidly, since foot trails are the only way to get anywhere.

Has Ecotopian livestock or agricultural production suffered because of the conversion of so much land to forest? Apparently not; vegetables, grains and meat are reasonably cheap, and beef cattle are common features of the landscape, though they are never concentrated in forced-feeding fattening lots. Thus an almost dead occupation, that of cowboy, has come back. And cattle ranches in the Sierra foothills have reverted to the old summer practice of driving their stock up to the high valleys where they pasture on wet mountain meadow grass. Grasslands research is said to be leading to the sowing of more native strains, which are better adapted to the climate and resist the incursion of thistles. Pasture irrigation is practiced only in a few areas, and only for milking herds.

But the true love of the Ecotopians is their forests, which they
tend with so much care and manage in the prescribed stable-state manner. There they can claim much success in their campaign to return nature to a natural condition.

(May 18) Marissa says I am squeamish about violence. Makes fun of American war technology, claims we had to develop it because we can no longer bear just to bayonet a man—have to spend $50,000 to avoid guilt, by zapping him from the stratosphere. This because last night I expressed dismay at the ritual war games. “Listen, you’ll
love
it,” she said gaily, “you’re just ripe for it!” With this, a flash of teeth: she can still scare me a little, sometimes is very aware of her strength—plain animal strength. And then great peals of laughter. Phoned to arrange to take me to a war games session not far north of here, which some friends of hers will be participating in. Her eyes shone with mischief as she set it all up. Before she even hung up the picturephone we were all over each other again. Giggling uncontrollably.

She finds my dubious confrontations with Ecotopian manners and morals endearingly comic. I am childishly wasteful in her eyes. This morning I had written a few sentences on a page, got disgusted, and tossed it away. She picked it up, frowned. “You’ve only used a little part of this one.” “Well, it didn’t go right, so I wanted a fresh start.” “Why can’t you make your fresh start further down? It’s you that’s making the start, not the poor paper! Think of the tree it came from.” I tore the sheet up and threw it at her…. On the other hand, if I lapse into inattention or mere American businesslikeness, she gets furious and accuses me of being detached and inhuman. But sometimes, if I am just lying quietly or thinking or writing, she looks at me as if I am not ludicrously un-Ecotopian but merely a fellow human being. It is at such times, I notice, that we have had our tenderest lovemaking.

I got up early next morning, to take train back to city and work on my next story. We bicycled together to the station. When the train warning bell rang I felt surprisingly bereft and blurted out, “Marissa, come with me.” She hugged me hard and said, “I want to, but I can’t. I’ll come tomorrow though. About sundown.” The
train swept in, its air blast pushing us back. I got in and we stared at each other through the big windows until the train pulled away. Her grave, intense expression is still in my mind as I sit trying to finish my report on Ecotopian population policy. Tomorrow night she’ll be here, in my room….

It feels good to be back at the Cove. I’m beginning to know the people here, and feel accepted as a colleague and a person, despite being an American. Bert is formidably generous, like most Ecotopians, really brotherly—but without the competitiveness that can be mixed with. Spends much time cluing me in on things here, introduces me to key people, lends me shirts, gave me a pen that I admired. Maybe it is their economy of biological abundance that gives them this generosity?

He has been reading my dispatches, jokes about putting an expose in the
Times
titled “Weston’s Progress,” but thinks I am trying seriously to overcome my “prejudices.” He finds the lumber story the best yet, says teasingly that Marissa must have inspired me a little. (I have told him about our encounter, though not in any detail.) Also likes the story on Alviso. “But the sports story was terrible. You’d better keep away from that kind of thing. —Are you really going to try to handle the ritual war games?” I told him that Marissa had already arranged for me to see one, in a couple of days. He looked at me uncertainly. “I hope it goes all right,” he said. “It’s about the trickiest story you’ll face here, I imagine. I might be able to help a little on it, if you want. I’d be glad to look over the draft, give you a little background maybe.”

“Sure you can see it,” I replied, “but I’ll write it the way I write it.”

We shook hands on that, Ecotopian fashion.

(Later) Unpleasant night visit from the Ecotopian counter-intelligence, who have somehow heard about my encounter with the underground. (Or have I been tailed?) “Of course,” they said, “you are perfectly free to talk with anyone at all while you are in Ecotopia. But you shouldn’t think we are naive about your government’s clandestine operations. It would be wise of you to forget to deliver that message in Washington.”

“And if I don’t forget?” “It will just make more trouble for your friends here.” “They’re not my friends.” “Then why transmit their message?” “I don’t like being intimidated.”

They smiled. “A little country like ours ‘intimidating’ a big one like yours? Don’t be absurd.” There was a pause. I wondered how much they knew of what I had said. “Weston, you are not a fool. We also know you are not a spy. But would you expect somebody who acts like a spy to be received in the President’s office?”

“Okay,” I replied. “You’ve made your point. No message.”

A sweaty experience—I’ll have to watch my step. These Ecotopians are not so easy-going as they look. And to tell the truth it relieves my mind—didn’t much like those people. I’ve burned the list of names and contact points.

DECLINE WITHOUT FALL? THE
ECOTOPIAN POPULATION CHALLENGE

San Francisco, May 20. Ecotopia’s population is slowly declining, and has done so for almost 15 years. This startling fact—which by itself would set Ecotopia apart from the U.S. and all other nations except Japan—has led to speculation that rampant abortion and even perhaps infanticide may be practiced here. However, I have now investigated sufficiently to report that Ecotopia’s decline in population has been achieved through humane measures.

We tend to forget that even before Independence the rate of population growth in the area that became Ecotopia had slowed, as it had in most of the rest of the U.S. This was due, according to American demographers, partly to the persistent inflation-recession, partly to the relaxation of abortion laws, and perhaps most of all to increased recognition that additional children, in a highly advanced industrial society, could be more of a burden than an advantage to family—the reverse of the situation in agricultural or less advanced societies. In addition, the horrible “Green Revolution” famines, in which tens of millions perished in Pakistan, India,
Bangladesh, and Egypt, had provided new and grim lessons in the dangers of overpopulation.

After secession, the Ecotopians adopted a formal national goal of a declining population—though only after long and bitter debate. It was widely agreed that
some
decline was needed, to lessen pressure on resources and other species and to improve the comfort and amenity of life. But opinions differed widely on exactly how a decline could be achieved, and how far it should go. Deep fears of national extinction gave heavy ammunition against advocates of population decline, and economists warned of fiscal dislocations.

Finally, a three-stage program was adopted. The first stage, begun immediately, was a massive educational and medical campaign aimed at providing absolutely all women with knowledge of the various birth-control devices. Abortion upon demand was legalized; its cost soon became very low, and it was practiced in local clinics as well as hospitals. As far as statistics could reveal in such a short period, this program reduced the number of births to a few tenths of a percent below the number of deaths—almost enough to counterbalance the still growing longevity. (Ironically, an unusual number of pregnancies were initiated during the exciting months when Independence was achieved!)

The second stage, more gradual in effect, was linked to the radical decentralization of the country’s economic life, and was thus more political in nature. During this period the Ecotopians largely dismantled their national tax and spending system, and local communities regained control over all basic life systems. This enabled people to deliberately think about how they now wished to arrange their collective lives, and what this meant for population levels and distribution. With better conditions in the countryside, the great concentrations of people in San Francisco, Oakland, Portland, Seattle, and even the smaller metropolitan areas began to disperse somewhat. New minicities grew up in favorable locations, with their own linkage necklaces of transit lines: Napa, on its winding, Seine-like river, at last pollution-free; Carquinez-Martinez, stretching out along rolling hills dropping down to the Strait; and others throughout the country. Some old city residential areas were abandoned and razed, and the land turned into parks or reforested.
Some rural towns, like Placerville, which had been in the 10-20,000 people range, gained satellite minicities that would in a decade bring them to a total of 40-50,000—which was felt to be about ideal for an urban constellation.

Decentralization affected every aspect of life. Medical services were dispersed; the claim is that instead of massive hospitals in the city centers, besieged by huge lines of waiting patients, there were small hospitals and clinics everywhere, and a neighborhood-oriented system of medical aides. Schools were broken up and organized on a novel teacher-controlled basis. Agricultural, fishery, and forestry enterprises were also reorganized and decentralized. Large factory-farms were broken up through a strict enforcement of irrigation acreage regulations which had been ignored before Independence, and commune and extended-family farms were encouraged.

All these changes, according to my informants, meant notable readjustments in problems of crowding, and the predictions of some anti-decline arguments were indeed borne out: there didn’t seem to be as many too many people as before!

Thus, the pressures for further population control measures waned. Nonetheless, some ten years ago the statistics showed that population had indeed taken its first actual drop—by about 17,000 people for Ecotopia as a whole. This fact was not greeted by the hysteria that had been widely predicted, and people probably took grim satisfaction from the news that American society, with its widely publicized overpopulation, had grown by another three million during the same period.

The third stage, if we can call it that, was one of watchful waiting, which has continued to the present. Abortion costs have fallen further, and the number per year has stabilized. The use of contraceptive devices now seems universal. (They are all, incidentally, female-controlled; there is no “male pill” here.) Population has tended to drop gently at a rate of around 65,000 per year, so that the original Ecotopian population of some 15 million has now declined to about 14 million. It is argued by some extremists that the declining population provides a substantial annual surplus per capita and helps account for the vitality of Ecotopian economic
life. Though the decline undoubtedly influences the confident political and economic atmosphere, I remain skeptical of direct effects—the decline, after all, is only .3 percent per year.

What will happen to Ecotopian population levels in the future? Most people here foresee a continued slow decline. They consider that a more rapid drop might endanger the nation, making it more vulnerable to attack by the United States—which is still widely feared to be desirous of recapturing its “lost territories.” On the other hand, some people hope that American population will itself soon begin to decline—and if that happens, many Ecotopians are prepared to accept an indefinite drop in their own numbers. In fact, some radical Survivalist Party thinkers believe that a proper population size would be the number of Indians who inhabited the territory before the Spaniards and Americans came—something less than a million for the whole country, living entirely in thinly scattered bands! Most Ecotopians, however, contend that the problem is no longer numbers as such. They place their faith for improvement of living conditions in the further reorganization of their cities into constellations of minicities, and in a continued dispersion into the countryside. In connection with this, the radicals are currently mounting a campaign to make train travel entirely free: this, they argue, could make country living more agreeable to people who find city pleasures and facilities important, since they could then visit the cities virtually whenever they wished.