A common way to imagine environmental futurity in the early decades of the twenty-irst century is through stories about resilience. At a time when the concept of sustainability has largely given way to a sense of recurrent crisis, narratives of successful adaptation have powerful currency. he United Nations’ Rio + 20 Conference on Sustainable Development, held in Rio de Janeiro in June 2012, is a case in point. While renewing and reairming sustainability goals established in the 1992 Rio Earth Summit, the resolution that emerged from that meeting—titled “he Future We Want”-contains frequent, sobering references to disasters and recommends fostering resilience in the face of their inevitability.An easy-to-digest expression of the resolution’s themes can be found on the UN website, where a series of videos, titled “Disaster Resilient Societies,” relates stories of individuals and communities that are managing to thrive in the face of disaster. Together, they present resilience as a strategy of adaptation that will enable us to shape “the future we want” rather than fatalistically succumb to disaster and impoverishment due to climate change and other socioecological challenges. Taking the videos as a starting point, this essay thinks through the afects and efects of resilience as a way of imagining environmental futurity. In particular, it analyzes the function of resilience stories as a way to cope with present disasters and to prepare for future ones.