Nature of Tomorrow: A History of the Environmental Future

This book of history and nature takes a look at Western perceptions of the past, assumptions for the potential for endless growth, and how these have been part and parcel of the global environmental crisis. It goes into stories, particularly sci-fi, and how these have envisioned a world where human technology transforms the earth but all hold a myopic view of the world as one where there is no waste and where there is no finite planet with limited resources. Author Michael Rawson unpacks these dreams and narratives and shows us to where these have led: looming ecological collapse and societal disaster. He does, however, argue that alternate futures are possible, visions of tomorrow that can be decoupled from wrong perceptions of infinite growth and ideas of progress that can be married to sustainability, adapted to more realistic views of the environment and ecological reality.