The Past and Possible World

A tender, hopeful book that pierces through the seemingly insurmountable doom of our existential climate threat, allowing us a window into another world through stories of tenacious, inspiring approaches to restoration and repair across the globe.

How do we pierce through the seemingly insurmountable doom of existential environmental threats—the rising temperatures, ecological destruction, and mass extinctions that haunt our screens, imaginations, and lived experience? From her home in Houston, where she lives on the front lines of ecological decline, Lacy M. Johnson asks how we arrived at this moment of environmental urgency, and, now that we are here, where do we go? Through a series of journeys—to a “glacier funeral” in Iceland, a forest in East Texas, and the Chihuahuan Desert straddling Texas and Mexico—Johnson follows the story of our environmental crises from the present back through history, locating their roots in colonization and extractive capitalism.

Humans are capable of terrible destruction, yes, but also of beauty, restoration, and change. Johnson volunteers on habitat restoration efforts and visits restored landscapes to learn how acts of environmental repair can transform not only individual ecosystems but also social relationships. As she documents these changes, Johnson offers a vision of what devotion looks like in an era of climate disruption—to nurture what cannot be fully restored, to imagine futures that are not guaranteed.

Written with clarity, humility, scientific rigor, and close attention to the deep memory of landscapes, this is a book about the slow, collective work of mending ecological relationships, the ethics of tying our fates to imperiled places, and the fragile futures that persist despite loss. The Past and Possible World offers a pathway to hope through the difficult and collective work of caring for what still can be.