Ecotopia (Custom prompt)

[Dash]

The book Ecotopia by Ernest Callenbach tells the first-person story of William Weston, a reporter for the New York Times who becomes the first American to visit the newly formed country of Ecotopia since it seceded from the union 20 years ago. Ecotopia was formed when Northern California, Washington, and Oregon. In that time, they revolutionized their transportation, their trash, their jobs, their trade, their housing, and their government. I’m going to be analyzing some of the similarities that could become if California were to secede today.
Note: The novel is made of two distinct types of writing. There’s a section in italics, which is Weston’s personal diary. Then there’s the roman text, which is the news stories that Weston writes during his time in Ecotopia.
One of the things that Weston mentions in his first article are the shortages of “[F]ruit, lettuce, wine, copper, paper, [and] lumber” (Callenbach 3) that appeared when Ecotopia seceded. This would certainly happen if California seceded today, as much of the country relies on the west coast for this and more, like software and tech companies. I feel like in the even of a secession, about half of the tech companies would stay in (the now seceded) golden state, while about half would leave.
Another thing that Ecotopia has, that is similar to California, is their recycling system. In Ecotopia, recycling is divided into three bins: metal, paper, and plastic. California has a simplified version of this, with a bin for trash, a bin for recycling, and a bin for compost, leaving them to be sorted by trash workers.

Some things that Callenbach’s Ecotopia has that I’d love to see in California:
The metric system: Ecotopia uses the metric system, which greatly simplifies things. But they would have to replace all of the road signs, etc.
The transportation system. California is close to this. Ecotopia has a very strong public transportation system, with maglev (magnetic levitation) trains running everywhere, and buses in all of the big cities. In addition to this, cities like San Francisco (Which is Ecotopia’s capital) have public bike systems. Pick one up, ride it around, leave it somewhere for someone else to use.

In general, I loved Ecotopia.