Billy Fleming

Forum Lecture: Building Postcarbon Futures: Land, Justice and the Energy Transition - Azrieli School of Architecture & Urbanism 2025-2026 Forum Lecture Series Speaker: Billy Fleming, landscape designer, city planner, and climate activist, Temple University, USA Free and open to the public Presented by the Azrieli School of Arc...

Friends in Ottawa: I'm heading to Carleton in March for the Canadian launch of my next book, "Building Postcarbon Futures."

I'll have another 20 or so of these to share in 2026 a bit later this year. In the interim, I hope to see some of y'all in Ottawa!
architecture.carleton.ca/event/forum-...

Always love going to reception, meeting some big name practitioner or scholar and their partner, and hearing they met while one was an intern/student. Usually while one was married. Happens like 5x a year.

Some new spreads as the book heads into final proofing

Landscapes of Recarbonization: Carbon Neutrality, Settler Colonialism, and Cumulative Environmental Effects in the Peace River Region, Canada Contemporary discourses of net-zero decarbonization (also referred to as carbon neutrality) routinely overlook the landscape transformations required to offset carbon emissions. Conventional analys...

other industries seeking to greenwash their operations or attain a new social license for growing or maintaining their carbon emissions. The late, great Karen Bakker wrote about it in the context of Canada's energy transition through the frame of "recarbonization" www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

The other is that it's far too early to know how much the world's (and especially the United States') supply-side only push on renewables is going to work. Anecdotally, I can point to a dozen or so projects providing massive new capacity that are being used by data centers, the FF industry, and...

These models are rarely accurate, and they are never precise. We've been under-estimating emissions growth in IAMs via the IPCC for as long as we've been making them. Every worst-case scenario that's published is replaced within months with a new, much worse case.

I don't know how much stock to put in these projections, which are giving a lot of weight to a nominal decrease in the rate of carbon emissions growth (the actual emissions in 2024 were still higher than in 2023).

I say this for a couple of reasons:

Not that he didn’t already know, but now Trump knows for sure he can roll the Dems every time and there’s no need to negotiate for anything

My favorite comment on the FT story

I thought it was mostly because the rebrand was pushed through without board approval (or even notice)?

A Federal Offshore Wind Authority: A Public Moon Shot for Offshore Wind We propose that a future administration establish a federal Offshore Wind Authority to supercharge buildout and deliver affordable electricity.

The current federal administration is destabilizing the offshore wind industry with stop-work orders and slashed subsidies. We need a credible plan to meet climate targets and build capacity—enter a federal Offshore Wind Authority. climateandcommunity.org/research/off...

I want to push back on this message a bit for those thinking about pursuing a PhD.

It is true that the academic job market sucks & that non-university research jobs—like mine—are unfortunately becoming rarer.

But it is also true that a PhD program provides an unparalleled opportunity for many.

I’d like to amplify others’ pleas to *please* acknowledge and build upon the work of librarians and other organizers — @heykellyjensen.bsky.social, @tasslyn.bsky.social, @everylibrary.bsky.social, et al — who’ve been tracking *all of this* and developing expertise for YEARS.

US Cancels Major Solar Project in Nevada Biden Had Championed The US is canceling a huge solar project in Nevada, the latest effort by President Donald Trump to limit renewable energy development.

NEW: It would have been one of the world's largest photovoltaic power plants. Now it's canceled [gift link]

AI Data Centers Are Sending Power Bills Soaring Wholesale electricity costs as much as 267% more than it did five years ago in areas near data centers. That’s being passed on to customers.

Bloomberg has done a deep dive on the impacts of data centers on affordability of electricity. Analyzing data from 25,000 nodes used by seven regional transmission authorities, it finds data centers are causing large and rapid rate increases. www.bloomberg.com/graphics/202...

Some test spreads from the new book (Building Postcarbon Futures)

Clinton era triangulation might be the most enduring idea in American politics (and one with little to no evidence of success).

Kongjian Yu, a landscape architect known for "sponge cities," has died in a plane crash in Brazil

We have reached the page proofing phase of my next book (but not the image captions phase)

Today is publication day!

EXTRACTION: The Frontiers of Green Capitalism is officially out with @wwnorton.com - find it at a bookstore near you or order online💚📚 wwnorton.com/books/978132...

v jealous of this

Been asking funders for support in this area for ages. A few are good on it (JPB, Summit, Kresge, Knight). But the big ones are still operating in the late 1990s.

A few more cover art options

Hey Canada, ready to get serious about fighting fascism?

Then let's go!!

So proud of Avi. See you out there...

You want to be alive, but they want you dead. We’re a new, well, funded democratic group that thinks you can meet them halfway.

i do not regret to inform you that we are going to win

Does anyone still care about hydrogen?

Globally, 75% of "low-carbon" hydrogen production is or will be electrolysis, while 25% is made from fossils. The US ratio is exactly flipped. Like in other areas, the US is pursuing an antiquated and dirty technology future while the world moves on.

And in case it's of interest, I taught a whole Spring 2024 class about Local Media, and I've got an open-access website (as I do for all of my classes :)

localmedia.wordsinspace.net/spring2024/

My newest #opensource article, in @natureandspace.bsky.social is based on 7 years of research, following the development of ideas of nature from threat, to tool to threatened. journals.sagepub.com/doi/epub/10....

Anyway, scams work because they’re convincing to people who are primed to gear their message. That was Aspiration and Kawhi. It’s also the design industry and nature based solutions.