Climate change is no longer an abstract threat. Day after day, an already disrupted climate is impacting the lives of millions, and the time available to curtail climate change is alarmingly limited. Going for zero greenhouse gas emissions requires retooling everything about industry, agriculture, transportation, and every city and town that people inhabit. The work of architects, engineers, landscape architects, urban designers and the countless others who shape the built environment has never been more relevant. Decarbonizing how buildings are designed, constructed, and operated is a sea change that is already altering professional principles and practices.

In Going for Zero: Decarbonizing the Built Environment on the Path to Our Urban Future​, seasoned architect and former AIA president Carl Elefante addresses how buildings and cities can and must help resolve the looming climate emergency. Elefante offers a decidedly alternative viewpoint, one informed by his architecture career rescuing buildings from senseless demolition and learning from the practices and wisdom embedded in built heritage.

For architects and the countless others who work together creating human habitation, the twenty-first century imperatives demand a profound mode shift, from an expansion mindset to one of reintegration and healing. Elefante argues that curtailing the climate emergency, resolving intransigent social and economic injustice, and launching the urban era onto a truly beneficial and sufficient path presents challenges that must be addressed through built form.

The challenge of our built environment and the possible solutions are covered in four sections: climate imperative, justice imperative, urban imperative, and beyond modernism. Elefante explains that revitalizing communities by optimizing existing resources makes social, economic, and environmental sense and directs resources where they are most needed.

Going for Zero is an urgent call to action and path forward. Elefante’s message is ultimately one of hope—but we must act now.

Known worldwide for coining the phrase: “the greenest building is…one that is already built,” Carl Elefante is Principal Emeritus with Quinn Evans, recipient of the 2024 AIA Firm Award. In 2018, Carl served as President of AIA, the culmination of leadership positions in architecture, historic preservation, and sustainable design organizations. In 2023, Carl was the inaugural visiting scholar at the University of Notre Dame Duda Center for Preservation, Resilience, and Sustainability. Carl is a Senior Fellow with Architecture 2030, a charter member of the Climate Heritage Network, and a Fellow of AIA and Association for Preservation Technology International (APT).

Mike Tidwell is a longtime Takoma Park author and climate activist. His previous six books include Bayou Farewell (2003) about the disappearing wetlands in south Louisiana. As a contributing writer for The Washington Post, he has won four Lowell Thomas Awards, the highest prize in American travel journalism. In 2002 he founded the Chesapeake Climate Action Network, where he has led local and national campaigns for clean energy. He lives on Willow Avenue in Takoma Park with his wife Beth and their cat Macy Gray.

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