Reading "Learning for the Future," 15 years since it was first published, it is instructive to see what has changed and what has remained more or less the same. The years following the Rio Earth Summit saw the proliferation of a great deal of local debate and community-level activity to promote sustainable development, often under the banner of Local Agenda 21 initiatives. However, political fashions change, and with New Labour came a new focus on Local Strategic Partnerships and neighbourhood renewal to tackle issues of local service coordination and social exclusion. Support for local action on the environment retreated into the background. In 2005 the UK Government launched "Securing the Future," its strategy for sustainable development, which included within it proposals to reinvigorate local action on the environment and sustainable development. These proposals formed the basis for the Every Action Counts programme which is currently being delivered by a consortium of leading national voluntary and community sector organisations. Some of the issues highlighted in "Learning for the Future" resonate with the experience of delivering Every Action Counts. Although there has been some progress, the challenges remain enormous. The threat of climate change and the move towards more devolved decision-making present a pressing need and a historic opportunity to ensure that adult learning is central to delivering sustainable communities now and to ensuring that people have a future. In this article, the author looks at the ways in which local action on the environment is--and is not--being supported.