The Nature of Tomorrow: A History of the Environmental Future

An examination of how Western visions of endless future growth have contributed to the global environmental crisis

“This book does something valuable that no other academic book I know of comes close to doing: tracing the history of imagined environmental futures in the Western world.”—William Meyer, Colgate University

For centuries, the West has produced stories about the future in which humans use advanced science and technology to transform the Earth. Michael Rawson draws on a wide range of works, including Francis Bacon’s New Atlantis, Jules Verne’s science fiction novels, and even the speculations of think tanks like the RAND Corporation, to reveal the environmental paradox at the heart of these narratives: the stubborn expectation of unlimited growth on a finite planet.

Rawson shows how these stories, which have long permeated Western dreams about the future, have helped enable an unprecedented, abundant, technology-driven lifestyle for some, while bringing the threat of environmental disaster for all. Adapting to ecological realities, he argues, depends on the ability to create new visions of tomorrow that decouple growth from the idea of progress.