We Are Still In

Out of the blue, a new Ransom Note From the Future!

It's been an important week.

AAM's Environment & Climate Network announced it's name-change, one that moves from sustainability to addressing climate as well.

The Network hosted two webinars introducing the Cultural Institutions sector of We Are Still In to individual institutions and to membership networks.

There were private calls and emails with interested organizations to help them sign on.

We were asked to send copies of the recordings and slide decks to some who were unable to attend.

So we scheduled extra calls for July (11, 18 & 26).

Then New England Aquarium signed on.

Meanwhile, Museum magazine came out chock full of sustainability articles, and leading with AAM's Laura Mott's endorsement of We Are Still In for cultural institutions: "I encourage you to consider joining them and take the "We Are Still In" pledge this summer," she wrote.

Then a regional museum association said it was interested in signing on, too.

Meanwhile, the We Are Still In Steering Committee met to talk about the run up to the Global Climate Action Summit in San Francisco this fall. The list of museums, zoos, gardens, aquariums and historic sites is growing, and growing enough to send a valuable message during the Summit.

It's been a stunning week, long in the making, hard to wait for, and just incredible to experience. We are showing the world that the significant abilities, resources, and influence of our sector can help address our greatest social, scientific, and economic challenge ever: climate change.

So, will you listen in to our calls, or have a private one with me? Will you go to the website yourself? www.wearestillin.com Then will you sign on and help us tell the world that America is Still In the Paris Agreement because we care about our World? 'Cause we do. 

Book Review: Public Archaeology and Climate Change

Public Archaeology & Climate Change 

Edited by Tom Dawson, Courtney Nimura; Elías López-Romero; and Marie-Yvane Daire         Oxbow Books:  Barnsley, ENG, 2017 

What a relief it is to read a hopeful book about climate change response; and even more so when it shows the exciting ways cultural heritage professionals are using science and the humanities to build new knowledge for managing heritage resources around the globe.

Public Archaeology & Climate Change is a collection of essays by professionals addressing the decisions we have come to know as “advance the line, hold the line, retreat the line, or do nothing” (Cooper, et al. 2007). The authors and their colleagues are researching and testing how we professionals will be able to make informed choices about which actions to recommend. They don’t pretend to have all the answers, but they have many more to offer than our field has been able to muster previously. And the authors don’t only speak Archaeology.

These eighteen essays are clearly-written, and very accessible to non-professionals. They also provide important and reliable examples for other professionals advancing research in the management of archaeological sites threated by the impacts of a changing climate on sites within the world’s ice packs and the line of wildfires, and in its coastal zones.

The text starts with excellent overviews of the challenges of climate change to cultural heritage sites worldwide. The examples in the sixteen following essays address both sides of our protection challenge: how to create the most effective tools for assessing vulnerability, documenting change, and planning responses; and how to raise awareness among visitors and galvanize citizen scientists in a shared mission of caring for these heritage resources.   

The essays present work, in no particular order, in Great Britain, Ireland, France, the United States, the Lesser Antilles, Iberia, Uruguay, Japan, France, Australia, Iceland, and Greenland. This variety of locations provides lessons in understanding regional climate-change issues and the varying climate impacts around the world.

The projects address assessment and monitoring of a variety of sites; indigenous knowledge in resource management; citizen science and participation in identifying, monitoring and protecting sites; use of humanities resources to understand comparative impacts of climate change historically and today, including the accelerating rates of degradation; developing new protection policies; and using tested conservation communication techniques to develop climate stories to raise awareness among visitors to cultural heritage sites.

There are too many bright lights to list here. I can say that there are enough that I commend this book to you for the excellent academic advancement it offers the field. I can also say that I have put it into my teaching syllabus for the graduate class I lead on the social relevance of environmental sustainability and climate change in museums.

I commend to you, in Chapter two, along with an important overview of the history of climate heritage work, the summaries of the eight most relevant recommendations (of 18) described in the 2016 UNESCO report on climate impacts and World Heritage sites. The recommendations were produced by the United Nations Environment Program and the Union of Concerned Sciences, with collaboration from the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and US-International Council on Monuments and Sites.

Chapter four on “Improving Management Responses to Coastal Change: utilizing sources form archaeology, maps, charts, photographs and art” is incredibly valuable to any historian or cultural resource manager struggling to either find data to demonstrate change, or to illustrate the relevance of historical collections to understanding and explaining climate change impacts.  

For those exploring effective ways to communicate climate change with visitors, Chapter 12 is a must-read. “Every place has a climate story: finding and sharing climate change stories with cultural heritage” describes the why and how of the National Park Services work to establish a method of communicating climate change stories that is adaptable for any part, climate story, and listener. The particular value here is the reminder to meet the learner where they are, and to use the myriad of storytelling resources at hand depending upon the interests of the learner and the history of this site.

But each essay is an important read. The story of Scotland's Coastal Heritage at Risk Project is an ideal example of community collaboration from citizens to government to record sites, update information on them, and to help prioritize action. The balance of authors offer similarly important examples of cooperative engagement as they describe ice patch archaeology, rescue archaeology, survey programs among cooperating universities, collaboration with tribal communities. They are a marvelous array of ways public archaeology and climate change response is producing new knowledge in the face of potential disaster.

Public Archaeology& Climate Change is a very important contribution to our field because it offers practitioners encouragement and inspiration as they race climate change to identify, record, and understand impacts on cultural heritage sites, and then to a respond to those threats and impacts.

Creating A Climate Cabinet

Though appropriate and valuable, my approach of museums-as-catalyst-for-behavior-change has limits to its reach and momentum at the moment; so do my attempts to cluster that work in cities on behalf of community resilience. My, our, hopes are not a plan.

To scale our impact, museums, zoos, gardens, aquariums, and historic sites need a Climate Cabinet to coordinate action for strategic impact on global goals. A cabinet of thinkers and doers whose full-time mission is to foster, connect, and strengthen the individual projects of museums, zoos, gardens, and their partners so that they reach a scale that can see the outcome of a planet healthier for all.

At the moment, activism through marches fails to use is slogans and chants in ways that inform the public of anything other than the marchers’ opinions. Marches grab attention but block little and advance less.

The #museumsdivest actions are better. They bring attention to a specific incidence of a larger threat. They call for specific action that is clear and has some larger effect through its symbolism, and not because a company is involved, but a museum is involved. How can we scale that?

For those doing this work, we have to do too much individually, still, with too little media coverage no matter how loud you shout. What if those individual projects could still move ahead, but with connections and awareness that scaled their impacts?

The Wild Center in the Adirondacks of New York has fostered youth climate leadership programs for nearly a decade. Can it use more partners even though it already reaches out globally?  

#NotAnAlternative and The Natural History Museum are making terrific statements and raising awareness around environmental justice for Latinx and Black neighborhoods near petrochemical sites in Texas, and indigenous populations fighting for land and water protection in Canada or the US against, among other threats, pipeline takeovers in Canada or the US. What if they were able to coordinate efforts with more groups for scaled public impact?

Maui Ocean Center is going to lead the way in coral reef reconstruction not just for environmental remediation or restoration, but eventually climate-positive change through healthy coral reefs adapted to climate change. There are a lot of aquariums propagating coral; is there a strategic approach to deploying them?

Scale matters. We need more of it in more places. If we allow it to develop organically, it will take too long to be enough. Not only is the world too big, but the negative impacts on the environment, and climate changes, have too many sources and no single solution. Climate change is a “wicked problem”. To address it we must coordinate our efforts. 

Colleges and universities started doing this a decade ago and have achieved solid success as campuses go climate neutral today or set 2020 target dates. Based on their example, and how they have moved the market on sustainability and now climate response, we could leapfrog to strategic, coordinated work that is climate positive.

The field has been intentional about coordinating critical work before, so it can do it again:

•         AZA has a species survival plan program that coordinates the breeding of individuals worldwide regardless of which zoo they come from. It’s for the good of the species, and therefor planetary biodiversity.
•         Museums and lawmakers have created ethics and guidelines and regulations to prevent trafficking in stolen antiquities, to facilitate return of items confiscated during World War II, and for repatriation of Native American cultural items, including human remains, funerary objects, sacred objects, and objects of cultural patrimony  

Those programs are made of protocols and laws, which result in important work. We also need programs made of strategic partnerships and planning for expanded impact. We need a climate cabinet committed to strategic support, and coordinated to scale the impact of individual institutions’ efforts. Its staff could help members could strategically recombine specific approaches as an ecosystem of action that strategically advances practice. At that scale, we could measure it all against climate impacts.

So, when Wildlife Reserves in Singapore focuses on exotic pet trafficking, the destination centers do too. If zoos and aquariums can work with advertisers to divert buyers to domestic sources or alternative choices, the demand may eventually reduce the trade. In the process, others can focus on intentional development of alternative trades which advertisers and zoos and aquariums can reinforce in the exotic pet source area. This is good work already underway, and an excellent example of what we could do in more areas.

So, when Maui Ocean Center focuses on coral, others do as well; collectively they serve the remediation needs of the shipping industry and military worldwide, and the protection needs of island and coastal communities. They could map the need for corals, the kinds of corals needed, and propagate enough to conduct the installations. This is excellent work started and soon will be ready to scale. Let’s start planning for that.

It is too much to expect each institution to also create a collaborative team for a worldwide impact. But if there is an existing infrastructure, shared ethic, and recognized expectation of coordinated effort and global impact, the innovators will scale their action. 

The whole world is a museum; each of our institutions is only a program within it, our fields are the departments. The globe and all that is on it is a learning environment available to humans for intellectual, cultural, scientific, and nature-based engagement every day. Would we choose to lead our museums without mission and strategy? Without collaboration? Without a larger purpose? Then why do we? 

Book Review: Fundamentals of Integrated Design for Sustainable Building, 2nd Edition

Are you renovating an existing building, or creating something new? Then this is a must-have resource.

Depending upon your team, this book will either help you understand the language and thinking of your architects, engineers and designers, or be a resource for encouraging them to design with sustainability if they don't already. Either way, read it before you get too far into the process, then keep it on hand for reference as you go.

Fundamentals of Integrated Design is an easy-to-digest textbook, and quite a complete one. It has a glossary in the back, and very helpful diagrams and images. There are the expected chapters contributed by experienced practitioners in:

• energy efficiency and modeling
• indoor air quality
• water efficiency and use
• chemicals 
• materials choices and product certifications
• waste management in construction
• landscaping

It has very helpful sections as you establish an approach to and principles for your building project:

• the historic evolution of green building practices
• the importance of integrated deign teams
• different rating systems
• life cycle analysis

I found the new sections on Net Zero Energy and Resilient Design to be useful introductions. These two concepts - where buildings generate as much energy as they consume in a year, and designing to improve "the ability to adapt to changing conditions and to maintain or regain functionality and vitality in the face of stress or disturbance" (Alex Wilson, 2006) - are the next frontier for building evolution. Both are incredibly relevant in museum design and both are most likely to be overlooked or considered too far-reaching for a museum project.  They're not; they're about to be the new normal. 

Our buildings can be our greatest assets - after staff and collections - and they can be our albatrosses. If you're designing or changing your building, you must do it so that it lessens your burdens while serving your community. Integrated design for sustainable buildings is the best way to do that. 

Book Review: Why We Ignore Climate Change

Do you ever wonder why you're so careful to remember that reusable coffee mug and those cloth grocery bags, but cannot give up your long showers? I do.

Don't know why you can feel for the people suffering from drought and fire far across the country, but not be as concerned about water use at home?

Don't know why not everyone thinks to recycle cans or bottles?

George Marshall helps us understand in his terrific, terrific book Don't Even Think About It!

It is far better to read this book than take only my brief notes from it, but here is my very simple summary: humans are complex; so is climate change. Family (human family) counseling is in order.

We humans compartmentalize our emotional brain and our rational brain in effect allowing us to hold two contrary thoughts at once.

We humans also accept and hold onto information that confirms what we already believe. We are willing to shape our opinions to reflect available data, expectations, and options (no drought yet so won't happen here).

We are likely to choose to listen to media and peers that affirm our beliefs, creating a "false consensus" as we limit the information they allow in. (Think you you stream only certain media, or give a thumbs up to certain kinds of music.)

We may feel that climate messages are too easily hijacked by media, corporate types, and activists. This makes it so difficult or risky to choose whom to trust, so why try? ("I heard that recyclers in [big city name] just take it to the landfill, so why bother recycling".)

We often think someone else is more likely to have success at tackling such a big problem, such as someone in the government or in charge of an energy company.

And the kicker, is that though Climate Change, its components and impacts, is all around us, it is frequently invisible. We humans find it easier to get up in arms against a visible enemy with a clear evil intent and obvious past transgressions.

That's quite a list! You can see how together those conditions create helpless or disconnected attitudes. When we suffer from episodes of bystander syndrome we can leave climate change to others to manage. When we let our confirmation bias or availability bias engage, we can attribute climate-related discomforts and difficulties to diffuse, multiple causes far away, and can stop short of seeing our own connections. And if the Climate isn't out to get us, and there's no enemy but ourselves, where is the urgency?

Museums to the rescue. Museums can help humans understand what has happened and is happening, and can connect that evidence to people's values, attitudes, knowledge, skills, and agency so that we all can do something productive.

The American public continues to consider museums the most, or among the most, trusted sources of information. Let's devise a coordinated effort that results in the public seeing collective response to climate change as the smart thing, the right thing, and the thing we want to be a part of. Let's make it cool (and then normal) to be aware and active. Let's give ourselves a safe place to talk about our questions and fears around climate change and their futures. Then we can come together to take creative, strategic steps toward Change. 

Good Words for Sustainability Work I

Reinforcements: Notes and stickies keep helpful quotes at the ready.

It can be frustrating, some days, working to spread environmentally-sustainable behavior and thinking. Practitioners often feel alone, unsupported, discouraged. Not always; but often.

Once in awhile I come across an explanation that clarifies my thinking, or a quote that encourages me, or a statement that I can use to help others see the importance, too. These quotes or comments from others remind me I am not alone, and they improve my thinking about this work.

I capture them on stickies and put them on the walls of my office, or I keep them as notes from conference sessions, or from reading or research. More always come to displace them, so before I recycle these, I'll write the quotes and my notes here for me and for you:

Metrics are the darlings of improving efficiency and reducing impact, but sometimes starting with concepts (missions), rather than numbers, can create greater change:
              "Starting with a metric blinds planners to the larger effect of one's actions in a way that a values-based plan does not."  (McDonough and Braungart in The Upcycle, 2013, p100.)

Green work is serious creative thinking. We are looking for new ways to solve long-standing problems, and doing it with multiple positive results. That new thinking makes it creative.That complexity makes it hard.  This helps me accept the difficulty of the work:
             "It's about understanding how complicated the modern business world is, how indispensable diversity of perspective is, and how hard creative work is. Here's why it's hard: because often there is no right answer." (Brian Grayer, Fast Company, April 2015)

The window for reversing climate change is closed; the one for slowing it is closing rapidly. If we're going to make any difference, we have to make changes, huge ones, and at speeds most people just are not comprehending. This succinct phrase says it best:
              "The yardstick for action is dangerously short-sighted".  (George Adamson, NOVA Special on "Elsa", 12.17.2014)

What is Your Museum Doing to Fight Climate Change?

Robert R. Janes' recent video on Museums and Climate Change asks our field "What public value do you wish to have?" (It is good and important; please watch it.)

Well, what future do you wish to have? Is it "Museum as Mall", as Janes calls it - entertainment centers with food and shops? Or is it work in support of "the durability and well-being of individuals, communities and the natural world?"  Why wouldn't we choose the latter?

Together we are living in a changed climate, and it is changing at an accelerating rate. Slowing and reversing this requires all the skills and attributes that we museums often excel at: research, critical thinking, creativity, problem-solving, historic reference, social awareness, team work, and community-building. This is no longer about environmental sustainability as a tool for relevance within our communities; it's about doing what we do best in the service of saving our world and ourselves.

The New England Aquarium - A Leader in Addressing Human Behavior and Climate Changes

The folks who are looking for solutions needs us to help. We can support research, testing, dissemination, and adoption of new approaches by working with the people inventing better solar storage, and more efficient solar panels; or protecting ecosystems based on new biological research; or testing water purification and protection systems that mimic plant structure; or creating better urban design for reduced fossil-fueled travel; or finding new ways to bring fresh, untainted food to those who have none.

And our communities need us to help them amplify their voices to ask for this change, and to help them participate in the change to make it more responsive and more effective.

This is human-caused climate disruption substantially created by GHG from fossil fuels. As Janes says "Why do we believe museums may abstain from addressing societal needs and aspirations, and be absolved of greater accountability...?"

Why?

Why?

Why?

Book Review: An Introduction to Heritage Breeds: Saving and Raising Rare-Breed Livestock and Poultry

Think what living history farms and historic properties could do for the genetic pool of livestock and poultry if even a quarter of the 19,500+ historic sites or houses, historical societies, historic preservation groups and history museums in the country participated in some way in conserving Heritage Breeds.

But don't think this view and this practice is just about history. It's about environmental sustainability.

"Agriculture has changed more in the past century than in the last 10,000 years. In both developed and undeveloped countries diversified farming based on adaptation to local conditions", the authors write, and is being replace by standardization most often including adaptations for confinement, standardized feeds, and selection for very specific traits (meat or egg production, for example). The more multi-purpose, versatile, and lower-maintenance animals of the past have begun to die out for lack of interest  - - often based on perceptions of reduced value. Well, in a time of changing climate and decreasing genetic diversity, it's clear that local adaptability and a broad gene pool predisposed for adaptability are a good idea.

The Livestock Conservancy and Storey Publishing have given us An Introduction to Heritage Breeds: Saving and Raising Rare-Breed Livestock and Poultry, an excellent and much-needed how-to for those of us who haven't thought enough about this aspect of our work. It's a safe starting place for beginners, and a great promotional and educational tool for the more experienced among us who could use support educating our peers and funders. The writing makes no assumptions about prior knowledge yet speaks to the reader respectfully. (The book is only $19.95: buy it for your bookshelf and then stock it in your gift shop for all your homesteading visitors.)

The term 'Heritage Breed' focuses on unique adaptations in an animal based on local conditions. Think about it - if you wanted to have livestock on your site, wouldn't the stock best-suited for your region and your mission make the most sense?  The cattle, goats, sheep, swine and poultry that have adapted to the landscape and living conditions of your area are the ones who will have the best survivability, physical comfort, and resource productivity for the least effort. We're talking Spanish Black Turkeys, Navajo-Churro sheep, Red Wattle pigs, and Cleveland Bay horses.

These are not static breeds. Their value is their adaption to local conditions, so continued adaptation is appropriate. It's the animal's role in human-managed agriculture that we're preserving, not the exact traits of a time long ago. That might be hard for some purists to accept, but it reflects the times we live in. Your weather and climate conditions are changing; isn't it important to be working with the breeds most likely to be able to adapt to changes with less intervention on your part?

Caring for, protecting and supporting Heritage Breeds is not just for specialists or history museums, it's also for small-scale farmers interested in livestock raising. So, if you're interested in promoting sustainable living among your members and community supporters, this topic is a perfect opportunity for public engagement. If you're getting questions about "what kind of chicken should I keep", does your answer consider an appropriate heritage breed? Well consider that the bulk of the conservation work is already being done by individuals in our communities. These private champions have taken responsibility for rescuing, stabilizing and promoting rare breeds. Don't let them go it alone.

Certainly some museum leaders are pulling their portion of the weight on this: The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, Plimoth Plantation, Accokeek Foundations, and The Farmer's Museum, but isn't it time historic sites and museums stepped up their conservation work in the manner of zoos, aquariums and botanical gardens in their areas of mission and expertise? If you can safely and responsibly care for these animals in alignment with your mission while increasing public engagement, then it's an opportunity to be taken seriously.

What's in your barnyard?


 

Overheard: Climate Change Discussion at a History Museum

Girl visitor exiting log house and cooking demonstration at Landis Valley Village & Farm Museum: "I wouldn't have wanted to live then: no air-conditioning".

Slightly older male visitor with her: "they didn't need air-conditioning back then; there wasn't as much asphalt heating-up everything". 

Just the week before I had had a conversation with a conservation client about focus group on environmental literacy among its members. The responses showed widespread awareness of the connections among air, food, water and the health of the environment, but no mention of climate change or, when queried, understanding of the relevance of climate change to environmental health. I had hoped in my heart of hearts that climate change had reached awareness levels, but I guess I wasn't surprised to hear this report. 

So the comment about asphalt and air-conditioning struck me. Why did this historic site visitor connect to climate change and the science/nature group did not?  This is too small a sample for conclusions, but it does encourage me to think about how historic sites - demonstrating change over time (though not with this mythology behind them) - can make a great difference in communicating climate change.

One of the challenges of communicating climate change is that demonstrated change, and demonstrated impact create the strongest, most defined, responses, but climate change is such a large and complex issue, that it can be difficult to demonstrate without using distant imagery: comparative photographs of melting polar ice, or decades of history of change in carbon levels or frequency of storms (see link at end of blog). Our visitors probably haven't felt that change; they see it and consider it, but don't feel it. 

When the situation relates directly to the individual, it becomes more real.  So, in these two examples, those being directly affected by heat and comfort are drawing conclusions, while those thinking about the environment as a whole, and its effects on larger scale, have missed it entirely.

With our credibility as some of the most trusted sites for information, museums, zoos, gardens, sites, and aquariums can communicate climate change in meaningful ways, but perhaps the history museums and historic sites have the best chance of creating change that leads to action.

• If your site has planting and weather records from 100 years ago, and can compare them to current weather and planting reports, you can demonstrate direct impact that a visitor can recognize and feel.
• If you interpret architectural or community-building history at the waterfront, you can discuss how weather-incidents and potential for sea-level rise might affect community and home location choices today.
• Do you have collections with photographs, paintings, or etchings for comparing to today's landscapes? Are they of nearby places (more accessible than Alaska) that more visitors are likely to see and feel personally?

Climate change and environmental sustainability issues aren't just for science and nature sites. These are global issues and we all have a role in creating change.

Note:  The 2005 article by Anthony Leiserowitz  on risk perception and communicating climate change for Yale University is a good read and is something I use in my work.

 

Get Your Green On!

You've heard me say it before: environmental sustainability is a hugely overlooked area of programming for every single kind of museum. It's a connect-with-the-community opportunity. What are you waiting for!  

The concept of No Child Left Inside is a powerful tool for museums trying to connect with the growing movement to expect environmental awareness, literacy and participation by the nation's youth. But first we have to help kids get outside.

If you need any encouragement to help address the national need to get children up off their behinds, away from a screen, and outside doing something - playing with friends, exploring alone, playing a sport, making art with found materials, climbing a tree, gardening or building a tree house, counting lady bugs for science class, or learning to make a solar panel to power their phones - here are some options for you.

Remember, museum people don't have to know it all; we just have to use our critical thinking skills and professional training to uncover knowledge - for ourselves and our visitors - and find some funding to help.  Here are a few resources for both those:

Information & Programming

• The book from 2005 Last Child in the Woods
• Let's Move: Michelle Obama's program to get all of us exercising and eating well
• Resources for students and educators at the Environmental Protection Agency
• North American Association for Environmental Educators (think AAM or AASLH but for environmental instructors - it's a gold mine
• Find your Cooperative Extension Service office and partner with them
• See if you state has a No Child Left Inside advocacy group
• Check out the really cool program by NOAA and the Public Gardens group on Climate Change
• They even have an adaptable sign and cell phone tour you might want to try
• APGA's 2012 Conference Education Session PPTs

A Few Funding Sources

• Small Grants for New England States' Environmental Literacy Programs
• Current funding opportunities from NOAA for supporting environmental education programs and for training educators
• Visit your state's version of the Department of Natural Resources to check funding announcements
• Toyota's Together Green Environmental Program Funding
• Small grants at the National Environmental Education Foundation

And this is just to get you started....more next time.

AAM 2011 Session: Climate Change & Collective Action

I have a tendency to attend any presentation on any topic by either Wayne LaBar or Emlyn Koster, both of Liberty Science Center, NJ, but this time they were really speaking my language - museums and their role in increasing human practices of environmental sustainability.

Wayne and Emlyn are part of a mostly-Australian dialogue on how museums can collaborate to address climate change...how museums can help humans navigate the Anthropocene (see Wikipedia...new, unofficial term for the geologic age where climate is changed by human activity...see also Curt Stager with Tom Ashbrook and Bill McKibben March 24, 2011 interview. The project is Hot Science Global Citizens and it's an Australian Research Council Linkages Project. Wayne and Emlyn's presentation was sort of  'news from the field' as they reviewed the project's early-stage exploration of museum interventions, intersection of science and humanities, and responsibilities of citizens and the media. 

Two parts stood out - Emlyn's discussion about why tackling climate change is so difficult for the field (with me loving that we agreed on many points, but I also learned a good bit); and Wayne's discussion about how museums must work to address the realities of public response to climate change understanding.
Emlyn listed museums' structural disinclination to address climate change meaningfully. For the most part, museums still tend to:

• focus on collections
• rely on exhibits primarily
• are slow to collaborate deeply and meaningfully
• are poor at integrating past, present and future
• their funders are cautious
• museums tend to avoid the risk of controversy
• museum schools, which might have tackled this topic mightily, have not been a widespread success
• grants tend to support the status quo, not innovation
• and museums are rarely visionary and do not take global leadership positions

Wayne pointed out that "Climate change is no longer a science event, but a cultural change and it won't be solved by science policy." And he tackled the question of "why are people slow to change in response to climate change?"  The collaborative project discussions have articulated two critical disconnects - one of time and risk, and one of science and emotion. 

First:  Education about climate change is scientific; response to climate change (perception of personal risk exposure followed by changes in behavior) is emotional.  Water and oil. 

Second:  Since the risk of loss or injury due to climate change has an uneven and unpredictable timeline for each human perceiving it (will rising sea level affect me anytime soon or in a way I can see? Did a hurricane just him my house?), the debate about when and how much change there will be becomes a distraction that leads to a stalemate.

So Liberty Science Center, instead of doing an exhibit on climate change, much they way they might do an exhibit on skyscrapers or on human health, has chosen to educate about sustainability across all exhibit platforms. It's not a science fact to be learned in a few discrete lessons, but a cultural issue that must seep into human processes from many, many sources.

As a field I believe we should work hard to address the science/emotion and time/risk factors, but let's also use our position as educators, collaborators, and authorities to emphasize positive aspects of environmental sustainability: cost savings, resource conservation, and livable communities, so that we don't lose our audience.     

I'm delighted to be introduced to the Hot Science Global Citizens Project and will follow their further adventures.

Museums in a Climate of Change - Part II

Climate Change Exhibits and Programs on Environmental Sustainability

Museums used to consider climate change discussions as advocacy – or at least far too close to it for comfort. Today, fewer feel that way and, as climate change discussions, TV programs and debate become ubiquitous, and green building and practices spread so rapidly, much of the public is hungry for green ideas no matter what kind of museum you are.

Each museum has to assess and make choices on interpreting green practices and telling green stories, but the climate change discussion is showing up in many ways all around museums.

If you’re thinking about an exhibit on climate change, check out Mark Walhimer’s blog http://climateexhibit.blogspot.com/, THE resource for exhibits on climate change. This is such a widespread museum theme that Mark was nearly overwhelmed with examples when he asked for recommendations on the Museum Design Group at LinkedIn. This blog entry collects those links exhibits around the world.

But what if you're not scheduled to do a big climate change exhibit? What if you haven't built (or don’t want to build) a state-of-the-art green building with bells and whistles to demonstrate - how do you talk about climate change?

If you’re a science or natural history museum in between climate change exhibits, you can create exhibit labels, branded with a “climate change facts” symbol, to install as a another layer of interpretation throughout current exhibits. Of course, if you’re into podcasts and audio tours, you can do it electronically. Or you can follow Museum of the Earth’s lead and create a Global Change Project Web Portal http://www.museumoftheearth.org/outreach.php?page=overview/globalchange.

If you're an historic site you can compare past sustainable practices - using a clothesline or convenient bushes to dry clothes; dumping wash water on the garden, not down a drain; sharing a bed for winter warmth - with nightcaps of course; a Victory Garden or an earlier kitchen garden with a little compost on the side and a lesson on saving seeds....you get the picture.

If you’re an army museum, you could interpret Army Green – the current science and practice of environmental sustainability in the US Army.

If you’re a general museum you could do an “I Spy” exhibit, or a matching objects exhibit showing energy-efficient collections items with object or images of today’s counterparts.

If you're an art museum you might post a mini exhibit in the entry-way or at the front desk that outlines the proceedings of the Plus/Minus Dilemma (my previous post). You might list your green choices in exhibit design. You might let the public know why you have motion-sensored gallery lights. It all shows that you care about your resources: those that are donated, those you preserve and interpret, and those of the community around you.

And don’t forget to offer the public some reading suggestions. I use some in my Green Museum class in the George Washington University Museums Studies Program:

Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things, by William McDonough and Michael Braungart, North Point Press, www.fsgbooks.com.

The Consumer’s Guide to Effective Environmental Choices: Practical Advice from the Union of Concerned Scientists by Michael Brower and Warren Leon at Three Rivers Press, www.randomhouse.com.

And this year I’m adding Paleontological Research Institution’s (Museum of the Earth at Cornell University) Climate Change, Past, Present & Future: A Very Short Guide, by Warren Allmon and his team, www.priweb.org.
Anyone have other reading suggestions?

Don’t be shy about discussing climate change in your museum. We all share the same climate: highlighting our relationship with it is okay to do in public.