Two frames dominate present-day interpretations of sustainability and approaches to sustainability transformation in national and global policy arenas. One frame relates to transformation in global environmental governance that promotes goal-oriented agendas. The other frame relates to earth system sciences where sustainability transformation means breaking the devastating trends of the Anthropocene. In this paper, we examine the historical and cultural underpinnings of these two frames, each invoking particular relations and approaches to sustainability transformation. Our contribution is to discuss the role of the past in these frames and to illuminate how current outlooks toward the future still rely on principles that emerged in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Europe and thus hinder alternative approaches to transformation in the present.