Explores some of the most important questions facing humanity in the coming generations. Saral Sarkar argues that the USSR bumped up against environmentally defined and resource-related limits to growth at a relatively early stage. But this does not mean that a free market, globalized capitalist economy will indefinitely escape a similar fate. Nor will a modified `eco-capitalism', as promoted by some sections of the Western environmental movement, provide a sufficiently grounded solution to the twin problems of environmental destruction and social injustice. The author looks, therefore, to a fundamentally different future - one in which our very notion of progress is differently conceived.