In this article we describe how the historical emergence and rise of future studies, since the founding issue of Futures in 1967, has been intricately connected to the emergence and development of environmental anticipation as discourse and practice. We trace a dialectical and intertwined relationship between technologies of environmental anticipation and forecasting, and technologies of anti-environmentalist anticipation and intervention, one which we argue has shaped the contemporary politics of anticipation, and in a very material sense, continues to shape the future of biological and social life on Earth. In so doing we want to critically address the very contrasted contributions that the field of futures studies can make to collective agency and to reimagining collective ways of being on Earth. The article also introduces this special issue of Futures on " The Politics of Environmental Anticipation "with the aim to bring to the fore the role that social scientists play in environmental anticipation – ie. drawing attention to the fact that the future could always have been otherwise. As a whole, this stimulating collection of eight original articles provides a critical assessment of a range of sites where varied and conflicting politics of environmental anticipation get constituted and resisted.