Climate change is affecting museums, their communities, and all of humanity. As trusted institutions with significant influence and resources, museums have the power to help avert the worst case outcomes, through skillful use of information and thoughtful planning. How can museum professionals stay up to date on climate risk and climate action? How can they reduce their own climate impact, while helping their communities adapt?

Future Chats are virtual conversations that explore trends, breaking news, and implications for our sector, hosted by Elizabeth Merritt, Founding Director of AAM’s Center for the Future of Museums. This episode features special guest Marcy Rockman, a leading expert in climate change and cultural heritage, with US-national and international experience in climate change science, cultural heritage management, and policy.

Speakers:

Marcy Rockman is an archaeologist with experience in national and international climate change policy. Her research focus is landscape learning, which explores how humans gather, remember, and share environmental information, and she’s used this to address situations as diverse as cultural resource management in the American West and homeland security risk communication in Washington, DC. From 2011-2018 she served with the US National Park Service (NPS) as the inaugural Climate Change Adaptation Coordinator for Cultural Resources. Recently, she’s held a range of policy and research roles, including developing heritage capacity for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), working with climate, heritage, and conflict with ICCROM, and developing climate-focused hearings for the U.S. Congress. Marcy holds a Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of Arizona, and B.Sc. in Geology from the College of William and Mary.

Elizabeth Merritt is AAM’s vice president for strategic foresight, and founding director of the Center for the Future of Museums—a think-tank and research & development lab for the museum field. She is the author of the Alliance’s annual TrendsWatch report, and writes and speaks prolifically on the trends shaping the future of nonprofit organizations. (M.A. Duke University, B.S. Yale University, Museum Management Institute).

Transcript

This transcript was computer generated and may contain errors.

Elizabeth Merritt:

Hello and welcome to Future chat. I’m Elizabeth Merritt founding director of the center for the future of museums and vice president of strategic foresight at the American Alliance of museums. I am so happy you are joining me today for the first in a new series from the center for the future of museums. We’re starting the future chats as an informal way to do a little bit of foresight with people in the museum field teach a little bit of the skills of doing future things thinking share a piece of news from the scanning. I do every day and model for how you can think and talk about it when you explore implications about the news you see popping up in your feeds.

It’s also a chance for you to network with some of your Museum peers, because 1 of things we’ve heard at the alliance is that people want more networking opportunities? So that’s both going to be virtually face to face when we break you out into chat rooms, uh, discussion groups later in the chat, but also using the chat feature of the airmeet platform. So you will see that there is a little chat button over to the right of your screen and I’d like to encourage you to get used to using that by dropping in right now your name and where you’re from if you’re joining from a museum, tell us your Museum so that I can see you’re here and get a feeling for who’s in the audience.

While you’re starting that and I’m going to model good behavior and type in hello for the Elizabeth so you can see if you’re seeing that in your chat.

Awesome. And hello, Diane credit for being the first person to jump in. Before we drive into future chat. I want to tell you a little bit about the culture of the event that I’m trying to build. Its it’s going to be a little bit like in humorous even though we’re going to be talking about very serious topics because heck you need a little levity sometimes to deal with the news nowadays.

I also really hoping it’s a place that we can come together and share our hopes and our fears and our thoughts and our anxieties so that reason. I would like to implement a little cone of confidentiality. We are going to share these introductions where I’m chatting with our special guest who you’ll meet soon. But once you go out into breakout rooms, that’s confidential. Please feel free to share with each other surface these things that we’d rather not have out in public and when you leave the room absolutely share your insights share your thoughts what you learned but keep confidential who said what about something that they did or thought?

All right. So, here’s how the agenda for the day is going to work.

I am going to introduce a piece of news that popped up in my scanning feeds that I thought was interesting in today’s chat. It’s about the topic of climate risk and climate change. Then I will introduce our special guest for the day who will help me explore some of the implications of that piece of news. Then we will send you out into little breakout rooms just 5 of you in each room with suggestions to guide your conversation about this topic. So you’ll have a good chunk of time to talk it over and share thoughts and surface insights and ideas and questions. Then we’re going to bring you back together in this main review at the end of the hour to share some insights again via chat now throughout.

Please throw questions thoughts observations into the chat window Marcy and I let slip or our special guest is are going to keep an eye on chat. We’ll answer any questions that pop up as far as we can. But you know, even if we don’t get to it in this hour we’ll find some way to address it later maybe in a blog post.

All right.

Before we get started. I’d like to establish a little bit of Baseline for this first chat about the impact of climate change. So what I am going to do is push a poll out to you. That asks about how you have personally been affected by climate risk. And you’ll see that you have options if you scroll down the answer might be not at all. It might be somewhat. It might be profoundly my house got flooded and I had to move. So before we dive in I just like to know how this has impacted your personal or work life so far and I see the votes ticking up.

And so far the vast majority of about 3/4 seems to be somewhat though. There’s a solid 20% or so about a fifth of people saying profoundly. About that a little later. Let me give it a couple more minutes to run so we can let everybody weigh in.  Okay, ticking up still not changing. Oh up to a quarter of the people in the audience are saying profound impact from climate risk.

I have to say I’m I’m not surprised that it’s a little depressing.

Okay, as I’m going to…I think you’ve all waited in so I’m going to close the poll now, so that is 20 rounding here 25% of people saying they’ve been profoundly impacted by climate risk extreme heat flooding sea level change wildfires severe storms about 73% 72% saying somewhat impacted and a mere 3.36% saying they’ve been impacted not at all and I dare say this is pretty representative of the experience of your colleagues in the museum sector throughout the US and the people in your community. So that’s a good context in which to dive into these discussions. Okay, so I’m going to close the poll now.

And introduce the signal of change that is sparking our discussion today. So a signal of change in foresight.

Speak is just some piece of news from out in the world. That gives us something to think about. It’s something that tells us something about what’s going on in the world and might suggest what trends are it might be a piece of news about a disruptive event. In this case. It is a story from the Las Vegas Review Journal that popped up in my scanning feed on July 10th. And the headline was neon Museum temporarily closes during day due to extreme heat.

Okay, this is the Neon Museum in Las Vegas and it goes on to say the Neon Museum has announced that it will be closing during the day because of extreme heat with temperatures needing to fall below a certain threshold before the museum will open its doors. Once temperatures fall below wait for it 110 degrees. The museum will reopen the spokesperson said this week that’s usually been around 8:30 to 9:00 p.m.

Okay, I think you can see why that opened my eyes and made me think. And if anyone is joining us today from the Neon Museum, please let me know.

Well, I am very pleased to Welcome to the stage my special guest today Marcy Rockman who’s going to chat with me about the signal change. Marcy is an archaeologist who’s held multiple roles in National and international climate change science and policy. If she is currently director and principal of lifting rocks climate and Heritage Consulting and associate professor. Associate research professor with the Department of arch of anthropology at the University of Maryland in College Park and I am going to drop a link in the chat to Marcy’s bio on lifting rocks so that you can read more about her.

So, Marcy. Hello.

Marcy Rockman:

Hi Elizabeth. It’s nice to see you and hello to everyone. I’m um, well, I’m delighted to be here, uh to be joining all of you and it’s been so wonderful to see all the places that everyone is from going by in the chat. So, um, I’m based in Washington DC which I think I saw go by once which is at least once which is really nice, but we have quite um, quite an array and a spread.

Well 1 of my great joys in the work I do for the alliance is getting to meet all sorts of interesting people. And another thing I’m really excited about with future chats is the chance to bring some of these people on stage to share them in their wisdom with you. And in this case when I saw this this signal I said to Marcy Marcy. I’d love you to talk a bit based on your experience. What are some thoughts you have about this signal of change what comes to your mind when you read this story of extreme heat and how it’s affecting this 1 Museum in Los Angeles.

Yeah, so I have multiple thoughts that have come to mind and the way I’ll share them is to say the biography that Elizabeth very kindly shared. Um is 1 of 2 hats that I wear. I certainly have a a policy hat. I’ve worked in DC. I’ve worked with the National Park Service with climate and Heritage policy with Congress. I’ve done some International work. But I also bring another hat to this conversation. It’s it’s my battered fieldwork hat. Uh, my training is in in anthropological archaeology. And my long-standing research in the field of Archaeology is about how humans learn unfamiliar Landscapes how they learn unfamiliar places and my frame is like if you picture the first people’s entering the Americas when there was no 1 else here, how did they start to figure out where things were and how to live there?

When I began as an archaeologist, I first was thinking of this is okay. It’s blank slate. How do they start to figure out where everything is? What quickly became apparent as I started to look at a number of different case examples is the blank slate is seldom if ever true because everyone is coming from somewhere and they’re bringing with them ideas and expectations and language and ways of practicing and even if they know that the place that they’re arriving in is different they still have those built-in practices and assumptions and languages. So what the whole landscape learning process is is very often a dialogue between past and present between knowledge and new experience and figuring out what works in this new place. And what does not and how do we change and how do we how do we build that up?

Several years ago, uh before I came to DC I was out in I was living out in Southern California and as happens out there. We were in a drought and it was to that point where you’d be standing on line at the grocery store and people would actually be looking at each other being like we could really use some rain like we really need some rain. And finally, it happened the clouds had formed it was starting to rain. And I turned on the radio and the weather reporter said to me or said out loud. He said okay folks it’s raining. It should clear out by noon. But in the worst case scenario, you know, it’s going to keep going through the afternoon. And I literally turned and looked at the radio thinking, what like we all need this rain. How is rain continuing through the afternoon?

The worst case scenario that should be the best case scenario, but also I mean I was in Southern California and I was like, I’m pretty sure that reporter the standard weather reporter vocabulary and assumptions is sun is good. Rain is bad and he just hadn’t updated how he was talking about it to the current drought situation that we were in and so that really started me down a a path of exploration that I’ve I’ve continued ever since then we just continuing to look at how do we talk about our weather patterns? How do we talk about our experiences? And where do we hold our knowledge?

And in what? Places and in what capacities do we start to recognize way?

Have at least experienced something. Um, so we’re in we’re in that experience phase. And so, I’m going to turn it back to Elizabeth, but say that’s the frame that I’m bringing to this heat, uh question and this heat prompt is saying how do we talk about heat? How are we thinking about it? And how are we bringing our expectations and our language and our experience to these new situations that are developing?

Elizabeth Merritt:

That’s really interesting. Thank you for that Marcy. It’s actually making me think about a connection between this and another project that I’m running at the alliance right now, which is about how museums are changing their relationships with The Descendant Community around repatriation and restitution and 1 of the things that has come up as I listened to people talk about it both academics and experts and people in descendant communities is we need to change our language because our language affects how we think about things so, you know, if you think about something as a collections object as opposed to a belonging or someone’s possession that changes how you think about it and your emotional and relationship and attitude towards it and now you’re making me think this is true of the weather as well. I would think it’s the same thing with in, you know, everybody’s talking about there’s not snow in anymore and we don’t have snow on the mountains in the glaciers like are we gonna have a time when it’s going to be? Yay, there’s gonna be 4 feet of snow. That is so awesome. We really need that. Look, it’s building up on the ice back.

And the other the other thing it just quickly is that I want to that back to you is you were talking about how your work is on the sort of conversation between the present and the past and and I would say what we’re now pioneering is it’s a it’s a a dialogue between the past the present and the future because by talking to our future selves and have the I actually get ahead of some of these things. We’re part of the problem we create is thinking about things in Old terms and old points of reference.

Marcy Rockman:

Yeah. Yeah. Elizabeth thank you. You’ve actually you just sparked another memory, uh that I have. When I was at the park service, I was the lead for a cultural heritage cultural resources and climate change and 1 of my colleagues in the climate program. He knew what I was doing. He was in an in ecologist. And he clearly had been thinking about things for a while, and he he sort of finally 1 day. He said I just I have a question. He said we keep saying everything is unprecedented and we’re moving into a new climate regime.

So, how is how is looking at cultural research? How is that even useful if we’re going into?

A climate regime that we don’t know. And I remember saying thank you. He had clearly been working on phrasing that question. So I really appreciated him putting into words. What was refreshing it what what was concerning him and the answer I came up to in the moment was really these weather regimes and that we’re going into are unfamiliar. We we don’t know them but we are bringing into these new times. These assumptions and languages and structures of doing things and power relationships and all of those and we need to understand where those come from so that we can negotiate and and navigate them and Elizabeth. I loved your example of The Possession versus not possession. I think is also really really powerful and 1 of the it’s a powerful recognition and 1 of the other pieces that I’ve been working with these sort of how do we Define heritage at this point which we often think of as oh those are pieces of the past and archaeologists.

And what I am seeing is more and more uh is a recognition that there are items that we recognize that Heritage but where Heritage is really held. Or we’re starting to recognize itself. It’s actually our relationships to it.

And so that is actually the functional part of is how we think about it and talk about it and that makes it more flexible.

Elizabeth Merritt:

Yeah.

Marcy Rockman:

And it changes what we do with it and sort of how we think about carrying it Forward into the future. And are we trying to keep it exactly the same which is 1 of the terms that you always hear it. Oh, you preserve it you historic preservation. You hold it the same but we’re moving into a place where we can’t hold everything is the same. So, where is that flexibility there?

Well, I find I find myself in an unfamiliar position when we start thinking about this because normally I say to people, you know, it may be counterintuitive, but the really hardest things to change. Or how people think in the culture even that would see that would seem very soft and malleable, but it’s actually the hardest thing to change.

But now talking to you about this topic. Let’s say great, you know everybody in this webinar and people out in the field are we need to change how we think about weather and climate and we going to change how we talk about it, even if tomorrow you could flip a switch and change that it seems to me there are a lot of immutable things in the way. We’ve created our world and where we work that can’t change as quickly as theoretically our minds are our language. Can you talk a bit about that?

Yes. Well, the first thing that comes to my mind is of course, we’ve built a lot of infrastructure based on that language and perceptions and that is really hard to change and that infrastructure shapes a lot of our behavior. And um, so I don’t know if this was in your mind, but whenever I start to hear about people say, oh people should write they should walk to work. They should buy their bikes to work and you’re like, yes, but so much of our infrastructure has been set up for people to drive and so it’s even if the mind is willing that the Habit is hard to hard to switch and so…

Elizabeth Merritt:

Yeah.

Marcy Rockman:

Um, yeah finding that flexibility. Is a really a really key, key piece of that and I hadn’t been thinking of sharing this but you just again sparked another um idea again from my archaeological background. I when I started in grad school, I worked with the original he was called the god of garbage. Um, his name is Bill wrath day. And he was the first archaeologists to really use archaeological techniques to study modern trash and by the he started in the early 70s by the later 1980s. I don’t know if anyone on the call remember this is he was doing cores through fresh kills landfill in New York City and was on the first people to really to really study that…

Elizabeth Merritt:

Yeah.

Marcy Rockman:

And 1 of the patterns that he identified through all of his studies of how people interact with trash and how they use things and throw them away is that we often have crisis behavior and I’m going to go like this we’ll recognize there’s crisis we’ll do something and and a lot of people will like it’s crisis you need to do this, but then that behavior drops off almost as steeply.

Elizabeth Merritt:

Yeah.

Marcy Rockman:

You could almost say it’s like the crash diet like you can go in the crash diet and then you can add but he said if you hold on it’ll go back down it might even go even lower than what you were originally doing. But he said if you keep going there’s a long slow reintegration of that practice.

Elizabeth Merritt:

Okay, so that brings up a really interesting point. So this is a this is a this is a third thing that has to change. So we’ve talked about minds and attitudes and how we talk about things and think about things we’ve talked about the physical infrastructure. You know, what in the…

Marcy Rockman:

And I was working with him studying on Recycling and we started to see a lot of people like got to save the planet. We’re going to do Recycling and then people got tired of well, have we saved the plan yet? Can we stop recycling can can we do that and it it sort of pitch off and it is always frustrating when we didn’t let that curve continue, uh with the integration of that. So that’s what I’ll say. There’s…

Yeah.

Elizabeth Merritt:

Example you gave it was Transportation, but you know, we might be talking about insulation and shade and how you build buildings in extreme heat or what people can walk across hot parking lots, which is something I’ve experienced, but it seems to me the other issue.

Marcy Rockman:

Yeah.

Elizabeth Merritt:

…is systems.

So let’s go back to the neon Museum you guys I so owe you a drink if I come to Las Vegas totally up.

Marcy Rockman:

Yeah, um.

Elizabeth Merritt:

So, you you say quit, this is great. It’s 114. We’re not going to we’re going to close during the day to protect our visitors and to protect our staff. We’re going to open and eat 8:30.

Well if it’s short term, that’s fine. But if you say long term because it’s not like the climate in Las Vegas is going to get cooler again. It’s going to get hotter. So, it’s like how do you create a system where people can come to work in the morning?

Have this long break in the middle of the day, especially if you were like front of line visitors facing staff and then come back to work from like 8:30 to 11:00. What do you do about childcare? How do you sync this with how your spouse is working? You said transportation is set up for particular Peak or is when people work. So what are all the systems that would have to change even if you manage to shift the mindset and the language in the physical infrastructure.

Marcy Rockman:

I was just noticing I’m gonna note to the chat and then Elizabeth have asked for information about Bill Rafi and I will try to find some links to that. We will share them up. So, thank you for that.

Elizabeth Merritt:

Okay. Okay, okay.

Marcy Rockman:

I think it’s almost this is where people start to talk about sort of the wicked problem and the complexity of systems because in order to change systems you almost you need to have the will and the people wanting to or accepting or understanding why and

Elizabeth Merritt:

Right

Marcy Rockman:

Understanding why then maybe they’re already doing it. And so it’s this.

I mean that I think that’s where the struggle is is do we change 1 first and then get the others to come along or you’re trying to change all of them the same time and so the systems change. So I think you’re you’re wrapping that in is that’s part of the the complexity of the situation. But as you said, we’re not it’s not going back, um figuring out how to

Elizabeth Merritt:

Right

Right

Marcy Rockman:

…find those points of flexibility.

Ing, that’s 1 of our we need all the pieces is part of it is just changing 1 without understanding the other parts.

Elizabeth Merritt:

We’re just trading cards.

Yeah.

Right. So where do you find the end of the ball of yarn to get to begin to pull at it? And then how do you make sure it’s all coming together in in a complete structure instead of just creating a tangle where you can’t figure out what comes next? Well, this is a good time. I think to begin encouraging uh people to think about what they’re going to talk about with their groups as we send them out. So here’s what I’m going to do. Uh, I am going to read the questions that were going to assign you as you go out in your breakout group, and actually, you know what? I’m just going to break them into drop them into chat too so you can read them as I…

Marcy Rockman:

Yeah.

Elizabeth Merritt:

Say them aloud.

The first we came up with 3 problems when we talked a little bit about this session. The first prompt is how do you think about heed? What are your assumptions? And what do you expect to hear? So per Marcy story about listening to the radio and then you hear people talking about whether climate what are your sort of Baseline assumptions about that conversation 1:1 and then the second is how are your assumptions about heat baked into your organization from operations to physical infrastructure? And I totally don’t apologize for that pain because it’s awesome.

And then the third question is what are some tangible ways that your organization can manage heat? Uh, and you know, if you’re 1 of the organizations that is not having any issues with you you can substitute another climate Exchange.

Okay.

So now um, my colleague who’s helping us with it is going to send you out into breakout discussions. There will be 5 people per pure rum and then we’re going to push you some announcements to remind you of what those questions are. And then at 3:40. We’re going to bring you back into the main room and we’re going to share some of our insights.

Separately music to accompany you out into the rooms. Maybe I’ll hunt…

Hello and welcome back. I hope you had some good chats in your breakout rooms. Um will Sterling learning this new platform? So I hope you we’re navigating that okay?

Now I’m going to be hoping that I’ll hear a lot of what you were talking about by watching. What you drop in chat.

So, you might share observations interesting insights anything that really surprised you or resonated, um while you’re beginning to do that though. I want to break pull out our second poll to gain a tenor of the runs. So I’m going to push a poll that is asking.

Okay.

It is asking you.

How prepared is your organization to cope with the growing reality of extreme heat? And I’m asking you to choose the option that best describes it and the options. Are we are very well prepared. We got this handled the other 1 is we can roll with the punches. We’ll figure it out as things come but we’re confident we can handle it.

The third 1 is we haven’t thought about it much that’s totally valid. And the last 1 is we’re in big trouble. So, you know that it’s a problem and you know, you’re not ready. So, let’s see what people are saying is that rolls in?

And so far, it looks like we got a majority leading for we can roll with the punches and a significant chunk of people being willing to admit. We haven’t thought about it much which is totally valid. And I’m encouraged by the loan number of people who think we are in deep total. I was wondering I didn’t actually have a uh preconception about how this would be answered. So, this is very Illuminating.

Okay, it looks like it’s stabilizing at about 4% saying we are very well prepared. I would make a personal ambition to help our field get that percentage go up.

And then a little over half saying we can roll with the punches. So, we’ll adapt on the fly as it were about 39% and being willing to say we have a lot much about it. Thank you for your honesty. And I think that demonstrates why we have to have these conversations with the field and then 5% saying we’re in big trouble, which I’m encouraged. It’s that low, but still very concerned about that 5% and hope that we can find a way to help out. So, I’m going to close the poll now.

And I’m going to start keeping our my eye on chat. So Marcy let’s watch together and let’s call out anything that we think is interesting that people are sharing about the conversations.

Marcy Rockman:

Just say I’m I’m noticing someone saying I’m having trouble with flooding um to and that reminds me another experience that I’ve had is I was asked when I was with the National Park Service. I was asked over and over again, which park is the most at risk. They just they wanted the list and I I would have to say… At risk from what?

You know, if you want sea level rise, we could probably come up with a list. But if you want flooding if you want heat if you want Wildfire those are different lists and almost everyone is vulnerable to something but and probably overlapping but it’s the…

Elizabeth Merritt:

Yes.

There is this great risk map. I’m sorry. I will find the link and share it again if I can but there’s a great risk map. That’s a cumulative risk map of all of these its heat its flood its Wildfire its extreme cold, and I actually looked at it. I was doing a thought exercise for…

Marcy Rockman:

Rank issues

Yep.

Elizabeth Merritt:

A talk I was giving in Finland about what would it take to create a museum that would last 10,000 years and I decided that the climatically safest place to put a museum in the United States to last 10,000 years was Eastern Washington State.

Anyway, so I’m noticing somebody commenting, uh, and people upvoting this comment that their organization is more oriented towards emergency response than preparedness.

Marcy Rockman:

Yeah.

Elizabeth Merritt:

And I think that’s a that’s a really good point because you know when a museum goes through its core documents 1 of the core documents is having an emergency preparedness plan. Um, but our field is not yet evolved to the point where it’s a norm expected thing for a museum to have like a system ability plan or a or to bake into the long-term planning for the building and grounds. What are these projections of risk to layer on top of our uh development plans?

I also think.

The way museums get usually get a lot of money to do capital projects.

Is a donor is happy to have their name on a new building. That’s awesome. But if what you need to do is really not build a new building but retrofit everything you’ve got to be flood proof. That’s a harder thing perhaps to put a name on and maybe it’s less attractive to the kinds of funders who could make major Investments.

Marcy Rockman:

Yeah.

Elizabeth Merritt:

I am just going to point out that Tatiana posted a link saying oh.

Darn it. I lost it already excellent. Excellent resource for building climate resilience plans. Yay. Thank you, uh, www resilience.com cultural heritage.org. Thank you for that. I also wanted to share a conversation that Marcy and I started while we were behind stage while you were in the breakout rooms, which is about managed retreat.

So, we have some a few communities in the US not many who are basically having to face up to the fact that they can’t live there anymore. And the example that I named and forgive me if I’m mangling the name is the eel to St. Charles in uh, Louisiana where the indigenous people there are being flooded out of what little remaining land, they had because of rising sea levels and increasing storms on the Gulf Coast and the federal government has finally basically said, yeah, you’re right. You can’t live there anymore. We’re going to pay to relocate you, but there are many other communities in the US that in the long term probably are unsustainable. I’m not going to name.

Payment but maybe in you chat. If you think you were living someplace where 20 years you think it’s not realistic that everything could be where it is now.

And I’m really looking for models of communities in the US that are beginning to talk about this about do we have to move it’s not just a matter of armoring the buildings or having more shade. It’s that this community is going to have to relocate either to other existing communities or this is 1 example that actually happened historically, you know, a museum a a community that was next to the Mississippi River. So simply up and moved the whole town to the top of the blocks because they kept getting flooded. So that’s a small example but similar things might happen. So I’m wondering if there are cities in the US that are beginning to say, you know, in 40 or 50 years. We’re going to have to figure out how to be 40 miles inland.

Oh, thank you Ricky. Uh, John Darlington who has written about these Heritage communities having to move. Interesting and depressing stories. We were turned down for funding for an elevation of the historic structure by a state agency that supports flood mitigation saying elevation was not a mitigation effort. It’s more of an adaptation. I guess if you’re talking about infrastructure.

Marcy Rockman:

This is another 1 of those system issues is the policies that we often have for his heritage.

Elizabeth Merritt:

Right

Marcy Rockman:

Still prioritize keeping things exactly as they are.

And not allowing them to move. There are some efforts to to change that but it is not it’s not yet really consistent.

Elizabeth Merritt:

Yeah, Michael from the Boston Children’s Museum commented, uh agreed raising up our utilities out of Harm’s Way from sea level rise. It’s not the sexiest sell to donors. I know the Chrysler Museum of Art went ahead and took everything from their basement. Which of course is where you stick the utilities. It’s better than putting your collection storage down there and they move that up to the roof. Uh, and that I’m sure that was a major investment.

Marcy Rockman:

Yep.

Yeah.

Elizabeth Merritt:

Oh, so somebody’s just in the floor that is a whole state. They have to relocate. That’s another I’m just going to throw this in as another interesting topic. I’m watching 1 of the other side effects of climate change and forced migration is what’s being called climate gentrification. So historically there are a lot of areas where the undesirable places to live where people of color and from immigrant communities. The only place they could afford housing was like on the edges of town and up on the Bluffs instead of the beautiful Waterfront.

Property well, guess what now that the waterfront property is flooding and becoming inundated developers are saying oh, wow, what we should be doing is buying up the property that’s in these other communities because that’s going to be safe. And then that’s pricing out and displacing the people historically actually lived there.

Oh Danielle. Thanks for calling out the Franken feiler climate initiative grant program. Yes. Yes. Yes total I’m upvoting that and thank you for including a link.

Homeowners which is certainly going to affect who can live in an area both in terms of again gentrification or pricing out certain people, but I’m also wondering whether it’s going to start affecting museums as well. I have not yet been con been approached by a museum that said their insurer is saying we got to look at this. This is not a good deal, but I’m wondering if that will help happen at some point.

Uh, and somebody is noting the Blue Ridge area of Appalachia is some place. Experiencing climate gentrification and again, that’s some issue of displacement because then those people have to go somewhere. Where are they going to go?

Yes, thank you, Marianne, Miami and Little Haiti is exactly the example I had first read about in people, um pointing to climate displacement and gentrification. California is in Insurance crisis with many companies pulling up and Maine. Oh, I didn’t know it was happening in Maine. Thank you, Joy. I will go look at that.

And 1 person saying that in Arizona at the last go round only 1 company was willing to offer property coverage. Thank you. That’s the first signal I’ve heard of it beginning to impact museums.

Many places in Northern Ontario where insurance won’t ensure against forest fires. Okay. I didn’t know that was true of Ontario. But thank you for putting that on my radar. Uh, so it’s again it may be there may be cases where people are saying well, you know, we’ll issue General insurance, but we’re not going to insure you against the specific risk when you know, that’s a significant risk. So then what are you gonna do self-insure against that risk, which essentially means building up a significant stockpile of funds you could do you could use to um mitigate damage.

Marcy Rockman:

Yeah.

Elizabeth Merritt:

Yes, Ricky 1 hour is too short to cover this issue it is it is. It’s meant to be a little brain stimulation.

Marcy Rockman:

Yeah.

Elizabeth Merritt:

So, Marcy as we begin to approach the end, are there any things you want to pull out of the chat or your thoughts as you’ve been watching these discussions?

Marcy Rockman:

Well for all of these points are so powerful. And so well phrased and captured. I think 1 of the ideas that it sparked as I’ve seen these go by is, you know, when I started working in climate change there was a lot of effort, uh put into well we need the modeling. We need to understand where things are going to go so that we can get our infrastructure planned and so that we can know what’s going to happen and the realization now is there isn’t a fixed.

Point or there may not be a fixed point is that that ability to sort of roll with the punches and what if the heat might go a certain way or it might get hotter or it might become more unpredictable or you may have these compounding. Overlapping stresses that layer on top of each other and so I’m really curious. Uh, if folks were talking about, you know is heat baked in to their plans. And where is it possible to meet? Uh, that with flexibility is their behavioral flexibility is their physical flexibility. Is there funding flexibility and just …

Are they seeing any of that? Um, or is there more still an effort to plan for a specific?

Target, which I think is again that older model of thinking but it’s hard to get out of he smoked earthquake and volcanoes. Oh my um, I have also been in touch. There’s some wonderful colleagues over in England with historic England’s. Um, Robin Pender, if any of you know, her name who’s been talking a lot about the issues of thermal comfort and trying to understand the human relationship to heat and we have some long-standing expectations around heat and cooling and I thought I saw a couple of comments here about AC can itself be a problem. It can be too cold.

It can raise its own issues. But trying to understand ways, uh before a lot of availability of AC how did buildings and how did people regulate their own temperature and can we start to bring some of those back? So that was also in my mind of our own again. It’s back to our own perceptions. And what do we expect and what feels comfortable and how do we start to up update that and our ability to um be flexible and to move with move with change or work with change? That’s what I’m saying.

Elizabeth Merritt:

Yeah.

Oh, I’m seeing somebody comment on another toolkit. We’re going to collect all these and I’m going to put them into a blog post.

Marcy Rockman:

Yeah, so many good tool kits.

Elizabeth Merritt:

Hosting in chat and invitation with my email address. If you are willing to share any of these stories officially if you’re willing to write a guest post for the CFM blog about how you’re having to change your infrastructure or if you experiencing Insurance challenges or if you are actually helping our community think about what are we going to do? When we lose the first half mile of our Coastal front in the next 20 years because we know it’s going to happen. I’d really love to get it on record published where I can point to it and say this is an example we should talk about okay. I’m also as we get close to the end, uh, this is the first chat in a series and I really would like to get your help in improving it. So I am posting in chat a link to a Survey Monkey survey with just 3 questions asking you about how this went so that we can improve it and also feel free to drop in chat your uh comments about what you liked what you didn’t like challenges and we’ll pull that out because we want to keep these going in the future and make sure we’re spending the right amount of time on what parts I’d also love to know what other things you’d like to hear about. Um, I also want to make sure I mention that this fall we’re going to be diving even deeper into the issues of climate change and what museums can do, uh to mitigate their impact on climate or help their communities adapt and other Trends affecting the future of museums in their communities, including artificial intelligence and culture.

Wars and the epidemic of loneliness and we’ll be doing that at the second annual future of Museum Summit. I am also dropping in chat a link to where we were posting updates and information on the summit as it evolves, and we will soon be announcing. Um that registration is open and sharing the program, but to the point of people who said 1 hour isn’t enough to address this I absolutely agree and I hope that you join us at the summit to spend some more quality time hearing from wonderful colleagues at other institutions who are digging into this, uh, in in more deeply Marcy any any closing thoughts or observations for our attendees.

Marcy Rockman:

Um as I’m sitting here going like this because it’s warm in Washington DC today. Um, I will just say thank you so much for all of this engagement. Um, and I think what this is shown is all of these questions and issues are very real and very active and this chance to bring them together and to share the tools and the experiences we have is really really powerful.

1 final story. I will share I had the chance to be. In Scotland, uh up in the islands and we were there talking with communities that were having archaeological sites eroding out along the coast. And before I left I had sent some questions to my colleagues across the parks. I was saying this is where I’m going. What questions do you have and we’d been working on these issues and we were talking this 1 homeowner who had a cemetery that was eroding out, um in into the into the North Atlantic and she said “These are the ancestors of the people in the village. What am I supposed to do? And you know, it was so heartfelt and she turned and looked at me and said what is the US doing?” and I gave her the best explanation I said we’re working on this and then I share the examples of some colleagues in Alaska and along the the Carolina coast that were also literally dealing with eroding cemeteries.

And what seemed to matter to her what touched her the most it wasn’t that I had a solution. But that she wasn’t alone. She wasn’t facing this by herself.

Elizabeth Merritt:

Yeah.

Marcy Rockman:

She didn’t have immediate help and you know in dealing with it, but the sense of she was not the only 1 facing this challenge. And just that sense of community that there are many other people saying this is a problem. I am trying to deal with this thing. I almost saw, you know, it just it was almost a relief that she wasn’t alone. And so this ability to bring us together to even share the questions and the issues saying I’m working on this. This is a problem knowing that it’s shared is probably 1 of the a really strong place to start.

Elizabeth Merritt:

I can’t think of a more perfect wrap-up Marcy. Thank you. If what we did today was how people feel like that they share this challenge with their peers and that we’re all in it together and that we will have some way to tackle it together. That’s wonderful.

Marcy Rockman:

Yeah.

Elizabeth Merritt:

Scenes of foresight. This is how you begin to think about the future, and I’m so happy you could join me today to do a little bit of Futures thinking together. Thank you, Marcy.

Marcy Rockman:

Thank you, Elizabeth and everyone for the chance to be here. I’m really grateful.