The origin of our research has been the intuition that, in spite of some dramatic calls of United Nations experts, the attention paid by science education research to the study of citizens’ awareness of the state of the world and of the danger of an irreversible degradation of life in our Planet, has been very poor. Our work intends to clarify to what extent this essential issue in the education of future decision-making citizens is adequately dealt with in science education research. With this purpose, we have posed open questions to several hundreds of science teachers in training and in service about “problems and challenges that humanity has to face” and we have analysed the content of high school science textbooks (looking for any reference to the state of the world and its future). Results obtained explain why we refer to the state of the world as a missing dimension in science education. This dimension should be urgently incorporated if we want to answer the United Nations call to contribute to the Decade of Education for a Sustainable Future.The origin of our research has been the intuition that, in spite of some dramatic calls of United Nations experts, the attention paid by science education research to the study of citizens’ awareness of the state of the world and of the danger of an irreversible degradation of life in our Planet, has been very poor. Our work intends to clarify to what extent this essential issue in the education of future decision-making citizens is adequately dealt with in science education research. With this purpose, we have posed open questions to several hundreds of science teachers in training and in service about “problems and challenges that humanity has to face” and we have analysed the content of high school science textbooks (looking for any reference to the state of the world and its future). Results obtained explain why we refer to the state of the world as a missing dimension in science education. This dimension should be urgently incorporated if we want to answer the United Nations call to contribute to the Decade of Education for a Sustainable Future.