More than 60 attendees came out to an all-day conference on climate change in Salem on Wednesday, where speakers took a hopeful tone but warned of the speed at which changes are coming.
Salem State University professor Stephen Young told attendees that climate changes continue to accelerate. “Our speed of change in warming has almost doubled from what it was the prior 35 years,” he said.
The sixth annual Preservation in a Changing Climate conference, held at the Peabody Essex Museum, was hosted by the City of Salem and Salem’s Preservation in a Changing Climate Partners. It touched on topics including case studies from the world, climate change mitigation, and how a global issue can have deep local implications.
Co-founder and executive director of Built Buildings Lab, Lori Ferriss, delivered the keynote address, where she talked about how to use what the city already has plenty of–historic buildings, to help combat the effects of climate change.
Salem is a Gateway City along the North Shore of Massachusetts, making it prone to flooding due to climate change. With its industrial past, the city also has over 1,500 historic buildings that can serve to combat climate change effects when reused.
Rebekah McPheeters, sustainability and grants manager for Malden’s office of Strategic Planning and Community Development, came to the conference to take notes and apply them to the city she works in, which is also a Gateway City.
“We’re having separate conversations about planning for flooding in 70 years,” McPheeters said.
While Malden isn’t directly on the coast, McPheeters said the city sees the Malden River as a flooding threat in the future.
For some attendees, the conference was also a way to learn about the community.
Emily Lerner recently moved to the Boston area to study Cultural Heritage Informatics at Simmons. She knew this topic would benefit her in her studies, while also helping her get to know the general area better.
Lerner said she was interested in learning more about retrofitting, the process of adapting existing buildings, as opposed to creating new buildings.
She said the conversations happening here are important because there’s so much to learn from other people in different communities.
“I wish more people understood that we have solutions, if people were willing to implement them.”
