The Past and Possible World (A Field Guide to Restoring Ecosystems, Communities, and Hope)

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

The Past and Possible World explores how to respond to environmental loss in an era of accelerating crises—climate change, ecological destruction, extinctions. From her home in Houston, where she lives at the forefront of climate disaster and ecological decline, Johnson asks how we came to arrive in 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, the Chihuahuan desert—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 and 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 well. 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.