A new book by landscape architect Billy Fleming argues that the building blocks of a post-carbon future already exist — not in laboratories or design competitions, but in communities across six continents that have quietly developed workable responses to the climate crisis.
«Building Postcarbon Futures: Land, Justice, and Energy Transitions» gathers 26 case studies spanning 43 countries, presenting what Fleming describes as real, existing examples of climate justice rather than speculative visions. The book arrives as the world confronts a cascade of environmental disasters and a United Nations report warning that average global warming could cross the 1.5-degree Celsius threshold within the next few years — a tipping point the 2016 Paris Agreement identified as critical to avoiding the worst climate impacts.
Fleming, an associate professor of landscape architecture at Temple University and a former policy advisor to the Obama administration, told Fast Company that the project grew from frustration with how his own fields — design, planning, and climate policy — tend to define what a post-carbon future should look like. Too often, he said, projects celebrated as climate action amount to ecological gentrification dressed up as progress.
Instead, the book looks outside the professions to people practicing architecture, landscape architecture, and urban planning without formal credentials. The examples range from the Zapatista movement's milpa farming system in Chiapas, Mexico — which relies on agricultural techniques dating back 2,000 years — to the renovation of public housing in Bordeaux, France, by architects Lacaton & Vassal, who completed energy-efficient retrofits and added new balconies without displacing residents.
Other cases include the Tu Deh-Kah geothermal energy plant in British Columbia, owned by the Fort Nelson First Nation, and agroecology systems developed in countries that faced blockades and attempts at starvation by the United States and Western powers. Fleming said these projects demonstrate that communities can flourish in a hotter, wetter, and more volatile world — sometimes under conditions far harsher than those in Philadelphia or New York.
The book's release comes after a year of extreme weather events that underscored the urgency of the climate challenge. Collapsing glaciers triggered a devastating flood in Nepal, heat waves in Europe caused more than 35,000 deaths, and extreme temperature swings in the Midwest destroyed crops. Simon Stiell, executive secretary of UN Climate Change, said earlier this year that «the climate alarm is blaring in every direction.»
Yet Fleming resists the notion that fiction or speculative design is needed to imagine a better future. He said he intentionally avoided climate fiction because real, exemplary works of postcarbon futures and climate justice already exist all around us — they simply are not authored by big firms and therefore tend to escape attention.
What unites the case studies, he argues, is a focus on how people flourish. That can mean stable, secure, and beautiful housing with ample amenities; owning and controlling one's own energy system; or operating a petrochemical-free agricultural system. In some cases, it also means challenging conventional ownership structures and rethinking which types of knowledge and innovation are valued.
Fleming hopes the book becomes a reference for designers, policymakers, and everyday readers interested in climate solutions. He describes the projects as imperfect works of climate justice that show what it can look like to thrive in a warmer world — and he argues that these examples offer a more grounded path forward than the ecological gentrification projects that often dominate professional accolades.
The book's publication reflects a broader shift in climate discourse, away from purely technological fixes and toward questions of land, justice, and who benefits from the transition. By documenting communities that have already begun to answer those questions, Fleming offers a counterpoint to the bleak headlines that have come to define the climate beat — a reminder that, in his view, the post-carbon future is not a distant aspiration but a present reality waiting to be recognized.