This "prequel" to Callenbach’s 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 economy. Politicians squabble over outdated agendas while the country declines.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 D’Amico 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 hands—fighting 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.