How is 20th century America different from the Post Atomic age in which Svetz lives in the story, There Is a Wolf in My Time Machine?

The society Svetz encounters when he prematurely stops his time machine contrasts markedly with his own. The wolves have formed an America that coincides with our own twentieth-century America, but they live without pollution and amid abundant life. A lawn alarms Svetz, and the wildlife is a mystery. For instance, a bird is "a tiny thing that fluttered and warbled"; Svetz does not know what it is. This does not mean that the wolves are primitives; the story alludes to their having nuclear technology and being as scientifically advanced as the twentieth-century America of Svetz's own timeline. The difference is in the choices the wolves have made in favor of clean air and water. This contrast offers a pessimistic view of modern technological excesses; people are making the wrong choices, and a poisoned world is a possible future.