Webinar on Communicating the Role of Cultural Heritage in Climate Action

Speakers: Dr Robyn Pender, Sara Croft, Elan Strait, Rachel Brisley, Matt, Caitlin Southwick, Sarah Sutton

Robyn: Hello Matt, thank you so much for this. Hello, everyone. Welcome to the third in our series of Fridays for the Future webinars which are hosted by Historic England in the Climate Change Network.

So I'm Robyn Pender. I'm from Technical Conservation at Historic England and Matt and I will be moderating the discussion in the question and answer sessions.

So as he said, make sure you if you've got something you'd like to bring up during those sessions. Drop us a note in the chat and preface it with a capital W and we'll be able to pick it out quickly and easily from what I expect is going to be a pretty lively session in the chat.

The role of cultural heritage in communicating the urgency of climate change and pointing towards some real solutions is certainly a topic that's very dear to our hearts here at Historic England, because as a government agency, we spend a lot of time trying to get our foot in the door with policymakers, and having to keep saying the same thing again and again: that heritage isn't an airy fairy side-line to this big, big debate, but absolutely central to mitigation as well as to adaptation. We have so much to offer because we've got the benefit of both hindsight and foresight. We know a lot of what we deal with predates the Industrial Revolution, and it was perfectly possible for societies to exist happily and effectively without just throwing a whole load of fossil fuels at every problem that they came up against. And equally, unlike most people, we are at our most comfortable thinking about the long term.

So, for us, well, 2030 is tomorrow. 2050 is next week and 2100 is uncomfortably close. We really need to be getting these messages out there, and of course, as an arm’s length government body, HE spends a huge amount of its time trying to do that with government, trying to make sure that we are included in all those conversations that are going on right from the beginning, where we can do most to help instead of, as is usual, just brought in at the end.

In today's webinar, we'll be focusing on communication with policymakers and advisors, but having tried to do this for almost 20 years, I think that I'd argue it's even more important for us in cultural conservation to set out and educate to inform ordinary people. Because that's where the change is really going to happen. Governments always follow the people. It's not the other way round. At the moment, everyone out there, whether they are just ordinary people or policymakers, are feeling like rabbits in the headlights, but we in cultural heritage really have a lot of positive messages that do make sense to people when you bring them out there. We can actually show how we lived in a low carbon world and point out that was actually pretty good. It wasn't at all like Game of Thrones or something. And we can reassure people about change that it's always happened and that really we can divert our road towards a more positive future. That's really what's needed to move people on at this point but that's more than enough for me, so over to Sara Croft, head of Icon to start us on our journey through what's happening. Over to you, Sara.

Sara: OK. And welcome from me, too. As Robyn said, my name is Sara Croft and Once Upon a time I was an architect, but I am now the Chief Executive of Icon. Icon is the professional membership organisation for conservators and the main advocacy body for the Conservation of objects and collections. Conservation and champion high standards in the care of cultural heritage. So, despite profound connections between climate change and culture, there are thousands of arts, culture and heritage advocates whose talents have not been immobilised on climate change issues.

The Climate Heritage Network was launched in October 2019 by over seventy arts, culture and heritage organisations from around the world who committed to changing this paradigm. Therefore, to emphasise the role arts, culture and heritage can play in achieving their ambitions of the Paris Agreement. Inaugural climate change Heritage Network event was a conference at which over 200 people helped to shape what became the Madrid to Glasgow Arts Cultural Heritage Climate Action Plan. The publication of this plan in December last year kicked off a year of culture based climate action that we hoped would culminate at COP 26 in Glasgow in 2020. And then coronavirus happened. But, as heritage folks are positive folks, and those of us who seek to take climate action are more positive than most, we decided to carry on regardless. So over the last year, the eight working groups set up to deliver the eight key activities in the action plan, I've been working hard.

This series of webinars which is a key strand of the culture of my climate 2020 programme is one of those outputs. And although I'm not a sustainability expert. I sincerely believe that everyone has a role to play in addressing climate change. And I believe that all heritage organisations should take practical steps to reduce their carbon footprint and to empower others to act as well. That's the ethos that I have brought to Icon where we have published an environmental statement and our own road map for change in our organisation. Where does this conviction come from? Well, the answer takes us back to the origin of the conservation movement in the UK. Here is John Ruskin, art critic, artist and writer. He was also a champion of historic buildings and articulated the idea of guardianship, the fundamental notion that we are all custodians should take care of our environment so that we can pass it on to the future in good condition. A sort of Proto-Brundtland and declaration if you like. And Ruskin didn't conceptualise caring for the natural and built environment as something set on the other stuff of life.

So, he shows us the way, in terms of how we want to approach, looking after our fragile planet. And as it happens, Ruskin was also an excellent communicator, both passionate and eloquent. And that brings us back to today's business. The first of today’s activities included in the Madrid to Glasgow Action Plan focuses on improving climate communications.

So Working Group 1 which I coordinate, was essentially tasked with communicating the role of cultural heritage in climate action. Over the last few months, we've been working on behalf of the Climate Heritage Network and its members to find the language to get the power of arts, culture and heritage to drive positive climate action.

Our aim is to promote positive climate action through communicating the potential of cultural heritage to help address the global challenges of climate change. And I'm delighted to say that our working group has a truly international cast of players and this is my moment to say, a huge thank you to everyone who's part of the working group for their contribution and their good humour and optimism. And together we're delivering several parallel strands of activity.

So just quickly, to summarise, we're currently working on creating a powerful and resonant but short and clear vision statement at Heritage Network that all of our members can use. We're also gathering resources, is to illustrate to climate change and cultural heritage themes, and those will be collected in an image library so that everyone can use this to help tell their stories, because that's really what it's all about. In addition, we've been working to build the Climate Heritage Network social media presence, finding new tools, and new audiences. And we're developing a series of advocacy messages to highlight the role of cultural heritage in action. These messages will form the basis of an advocacy toolkit.

The aim of the toolkit is to empower and support people to communicate the links between culture and change, and it will include, amongst other things, a short explainer on the role of cultural heritage and climate action. So something that people can use when they're talking to friends, colleagues, policymakers, etc.

Finally, we'll collate a library of key communication resources including case studies, quotes, key references. And we're also thinking about what are ask might be a COP 26 when it finally happens next year.

What is it that we want to achieve in terms of embedding cultural heritage within climate policy on a global scale? So if this is a topic that you're interested in, then please do get in touch. Details Working Group 1 are available on the Climate Heritage Network website.

So what are we going to do today? Today's webinar addresses the challenging and critical activity of communicating the role of cultural heritage in climate action, particularly with policymakers and policy advisors. Our wonderful guest panel will present their areas and perspectives on the intersection of policy. Cultural heritage will examine how to help cultural heritage workers and policymakers communicate that in ways that advance our shared goals.

So onto our first speaker. Elan Strait is the director of the US Climate Campaigns in Washington DC. Elan manages the 'We Are Still In' initiative which has managed to raise the voice of subnational actors who support the Paris Agreement on climate change. Elan’s team have created an overarching structure with a broad and diverse coalition of American institutions that remain committed to act climate. Nearly 4000 cities and states, colleges and universities, businesses and investors, faith and health organisations and cultural institutions have committed to cross sector alliances to accelerate climate action. Most recently, Elan served as the National Security Council's Director for Climate, Clean Energy at the White House. Prior to that, he served as a negator at the Paris Agreement for the US Department of State, leading the negotiations on agreements, transparency and accountability provisions. So he's certainly earned his climate action stripes. Over to you, Elan.

Elan: Thank you so much and thank you everybody for joining me today. I trust that you can all hear me. OK. And this is my first time using this particular system, so I just want to make sure everything works before we really dive into it. Great, OK, So what I want to talk about today is really in the US context, but hopefully make this more applicable internationally. I'm so impressed by how international and widespread this call is today, but in the US context, thinking about in the current place that we're in, which is less than a week before the US election, where climate change is clearly on the ballot. And the country has to pick a direction. What is the role of culture institutions in setting that direction for the for the country? And a lot of what I'm going to talk about may be uncomfortable. I think this includes myself. I'm part of a non-profit United States organisation. We have a charitable tax status. And often we struggle with the issues of what is a political issue and what is a charitable non-profit issue. And so I think some of the discussions today will really surface these issues. How are cultural institutions? What is the role of a cultural institution in the policy making process in a way that's true to cultural institutions, but maybe also makes us a little bit uncomfortable.

So, what I'm going to first start off with is 'We Are Still In', so we're still in is the largest coalition of subnational actors in the United States, committed to climate change. It is the primary way through which cultural institutions can be part of a broader coalition, and work with businesses, cities, universities, healthcare organisations, faith groups, states and tribes to advance climate action in the US, 'We Are Still In' was launched in 2017.

It was launched just a handful of days after President Trump announced that he was going to withdraw the US from the Paris Agreement and one of the things that I found particularly interesting about the launch of 'We Are Still In' is I never thought of the Paris Agreement, or this global international agreement as being a lightning rod for public momentum on climate. I always thought that that it was going to be a domestic issue, maybe a natural disaster that was really going to capture the public's imagination and I was shocked to see how much momentum went into reacting to the President's decision to withdraw the US from the Paris Agreement? And I think a lot of that is that in the US, and I think around the world, people feel a global connection to the issue. They don't view climate change as an issue that's happening in their backyard necessarily. They view it as a planetary level issue, and in some cases that's good. And in some cases that's bad and we'll get into a little bit of that. So, as you can see, 'We Are Still' In is now up to 4000 signatories. It's present in all 50 states, and representing 2/3 of the US population in the US and 2/3 of the US economy. So, it is a massive coalition of entities that are advancing climate action.

So, the work of the coalition is that we have three different work streams, so originally 'We Are Still In' was launched to build confidence in American climate leadership to international audiences. When the president announced that he intended to withdraw the US from the Paris agreement, our first concern was that because of the nature of the Paris agreement, which is to say that the targets themselves are voluntary, the actions that countries take are voluntary. We were worried that if the United States withdrew that other countries, other major economies would follow suit and also step back from the agreement.

And so our objective at the beginning was to communicate to the rest of the world all of the climate activity that's still going on in the United States. To reassure the rest of the world that just because the federal government was withdrawing didn't mean that Americans were stepping back from climate action, and in fact lots of climate action continues in the United States at the subnational level. That communication we undertook by going directly to the international negotiations and setting up events in a pavilion that we could communicate directly to other countries about climate action. The second objective of the coalition is not only to communicate that action is going on in the United States, but actually spur that action and what we found is that there is a major strength in numbers component about climate action. That the more you see your peers acting on climate, the more likely you are to act on climate. And this is particularly true in a very micro scale.

So, I don't know if any of you had the experience of living in a neighbourhood in which there are single family homes and seeing solar panels go up on somebody's roof and then all of a sudden their neighbour has solar panels on the roof and then their neighbourhood solar panels on the roof. But there is something about climate action that is contagious and so having a coalition of 4000 actors who are all communicating about their action actually creates an atmosphere where more people want to act.

But the third part of the coalition was not something we originally intended to do. The third work stream is about increasing support at the local level for climate action. And we didn't originally intend to have this coalition serve that kind of domestic communications purpose. But we found that when we went to international talks and talked to other governments that there is a possibility for emissions in the United States continue to go down because of some national action that they wanted to see proof. They wanted to see emissions go down and so we had to spur that action. And it turns out, if you don't have a federal government that's acting on climate, what matters a lot to reducing emissions is what happens at the state level. So what happens in Pennsylvania and what happens in Ohio? And if you want to see emissions go down in Ohio, then what really matters is, are emissions going down in the communities in Ohio? Are actions being taken at the local level? Is Ohio State in Columbus reducing its emissions? Is the city of Cleveland reducing its emissions?

And so it became really clear to us that this global problem, if we want to see it addressed on a global scale, it mattered a lot what was happening at the hyperlocal scale in the United States. We had to change the attitude of Cleveland of Cincinnati of small towns throughout Ohio if we wanted to change the attitude of Ohio. And to change the attitude of Ohio meant that emissions might go down across the country. And so there's this role for cultural institutions along all three of these work streams, to be present and communicate internationally, to do operational actions that increase their level of ambition and reduce emissions, and maybe the most important part for cultural institutions is this local community level communication.

I'm not showing you here anything that you all don't already know, but if you look at trusted sources of information on climate, cultural institutions rank as the very top, most trusted source. You all know this, but I'll be honest, coming from a policymaker background policymakers don't know this.

Policymakers still try, first and foremost, to have their communications travel through the press. And sometimes this is successful, the press has a wide reach, whether it’s national press, or local press. But if you look at the numbers, they are not as trusted as cultural institutions. And when we talk about this work stream of spreading the support for climate action, I think cultural institutions have such an important role to play that they should be proactive in offering themselves as a service to policymakers. Cultural institutions need to make this case directly and have an offer. We are the most trusted source in your community. You are the most trusted source in these swing states you care about. And if you want to see public opinion change on climate change, you should come through us. And, in fact, in the United States, that is the need of the climate movement. It’s what you all do every day. It is include people, it is educate people and it is empower people, in the places they live and in the places they care about. And the reason this is so incredibly important is that, if you think about, in the US context, What is it about the United States that makes the US the only country that’s not in the Paris Climate Agreement? The only country with a major political party that is still sceptical of the science of climate change?

The truth is, what’s different is that there a lot of money and misinformation in the United States. As we head, possibly, into a new administration, or possibly a re-election of the incumbent, these policy discussions on what we do about the climate are rotten with misinformation. And if you look at the political reality, with the previous slide about trusted sources, it’s possible that no entity is more important in getting to success on climate through the policy than cultural institutions, because of their level of trust in the United States and around the world. And so, as I said, if you think about what matters internationally, what matters is whether change is happening at the local level in the United States. Cultural institutions, no matter where they are, are best placed to do that.

You all know that, and the truth is that the policymakers aren't quite as familiar with that. So I think that that leaves an important action for you all to take, which is to tell your story. I think that this is simply a call from the situation to be absolutely proactive about. I think there's a sense that if the information is just out there, if it's present at the exhibits, if it's present in the education materials, that people will learn and increase their knowledge of climate change. And I don't believe that that's true. I think each cultural institution tells a story, and that story needs to be told proactively. And I think it's important for each institution to think about who are the policymakers that I can reach, and what is it that I can offer them in addressing the climate crisis?

So that's what I wanted to leave with is that I love the concept of thinking about the long term. Cultural institutions are inherently set up by design to be long term institutions. They're about history, culture, things that pass down from generation to generation. And the true issue with climate policy and climate communications, right now, is that it is too difficult. We have not yet established this concept in the minds of, at least in the US, in the minds of every American, that what you do today impacts future generations, and no institution is better set to make that to make that a reality for Americans to explain that to them, then cultural institutions. And so, that's the unique role that you all have. And as a policymaker, it's been so informative for me over the last three years to work with Sara and understand how you all can be utilised as part of this movement in a way that I don't think you have before. So thank you very much, and I'll be delighted to take questions after we're done with the presentations.

Sara: Thank you so much for that excellent contribution, Elan, and for reinforcing the point about heritage being so valuable in these important debates I would now like to introduce our second speaker who is Rachel Brisley. She is head of the Low Carbon and Climate Resilience at Steer and is a specialist in low carbon resilience, with over 25 years’ experience in private, public and voluntary sectors, working in social, economic and physical regeneration. Rachel's earlier career was in the public sector. First working from the Civic Trust, and then leading the Awards for All programme for the National Lottery Community Fund. She also worked for Liverpool City Council, providing housing, planning and environmental sustainability policy support and as a qualified planner, she has extensive experience of working and managing multi and interdisciplinary teams on research projects and evaluations. Rachel is currently co-authoring the Health Community and Environment chapter in the evidence report for the third UK Climate Change Risk Assessment, due to be published in 2021. So I will now pass over to Rachel.

Rachel: Thank you, Sara, and also I've just been reminded that I did some work for you a few years ago and so yes, I work for Steer. I lead a work on low carbon climate resilience. I'm going to talk to a bit about climate change policy in the UK. How this links through to heritage and yes, in terms of my credentials. One thing I'm looking at with the UK Climate Change Risk Assessment Report, which has a deadline of today in relation to the impacts of climate for built heritage. But also I did study for Sara a few years ago, when she was at Heritage Lottery Fund, regarding the degree to which the beneficiaries of Heritage Lottery refunding were meeting the environmental requirements and some of the challenges around, obviously, enhancing the heritage, but also being aware of minimising emissions and adapting to climate change. So I'm using… sorry I’m not used to this screen.

[They discuss a technical issue with improving sound quality]

Sara: OK, thank you. So, I'm just going to talk across five areas. Just a few slides that talk about climate change policy in the UK. A little bit about the future projections, carbon emissions and the reduction. The implications of the pandemic and the route to net zero. So first of all, climate for a quick reminder of climate change policy in the UK. The UK was a signatory to the Paris Agreement. This was around looking to keep global warming to below 1.5 degrees. The reason it's 1.5 degrees is because there are major implications for habitat species and actually humans being able to habitat parts of the globe if that if that temperature actually gets to above 1.5 degrees. Because of this, last year the UK committed to the net zero carbon emissions by 2050, so it's the first G7 country to do this. Net. The reason for the net is that is that it's considered pretty impossible to actually get to absolute zero, so an element will be offset through some carbon capture and sequestration, etc.

The UK Climate Change Act provides a framework for climate change mitigation, risk assessment and adaptation. And also within this adaptation side we mentioned in in the introduction the UK Climate Change Risk Assessment. This is produced every five years, identifying all the biggest climate, all the biggest risks. And following that, a national adaptation programme is produced in the UK, in England and the other devolved administrations, and as I say, risks to heritage are included in there. It’s interesting that we've actually moved on from built heritage and gardens to cultural heritage this time round, recognising this broader acceptance of that term. And climate change is something that is devolved in the UK, so there are different requirements in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.

So, just moving on here. Just a quick snapshot of some of that climate change policy. I think the climate Change Act 2008 has been updated with the net zero commitment. We've had the new UK climate change projections a couple of years ago. Many organisations, including Historic England, report to government on their adaptation activities. And so there's a copy of your most recent report, and then I just mentioned about the Climate Change Risk Assessment and the Five Year Cycle, including updating the national adaptation programme. So UK climate change projections. These were updated two years ago. The broad message is the same: a greater chance of warmer, wetter winters and hotter, drier summers. The big difference between the most recent projections and the 2009 projections of sea level rise is projected to be higher than previously thought due to melting, more understanding around the melting of the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets, particularly of an impact on the southeast of England with sea level rise for the Thames being around a metre by the by end of century. And there's a load of really good information actually provided on the Met Office website that anybody can access.

So, here is a decomposition of the UK's consumption emissions footprint from a couple of years ago. So, particularly highlighting here on products and just thinking around the various aspects of what actually makes up our full carbon footprint, so energy not actually as high as you would think. Things like services and manufactured products are pretty high.

Interestingly, on consumption, and I don't know where it comes in here. I work for a transport, economic development, organisation, so I do have colleagues who work in aviation and there's been concerns about this. But actually, globally, the amount of carbon emissions from datacentres is equivalent or slightly more than aviation industry internationally, so it's just quite an interesting point there around how we can think that being online is the environmentally sustainable solution where is actually think about those servers and blasting all that hot air out, etc. And there is there is a lot of work to address that. So, in terms of progress on emission reduction, this is showing back from 1990 around the current date. You see the power of electricity, particularly as significantly reduced greenhouse gas emissions. So big move to renewable electricity. Across the UK, I think Scotland’s on about 80% of its electricity is produced from renewables, around 50% in Northern Ireland, 30-40% in in Wales and England. And we are increasingly having days weeks when we aren't actually using any fossil fuels. As for moving to carbon budgets, this carbon budget is something that's put in place on, I think a five year cycle. Looking at a future. Basically, the future target and then the amount of carbon that can be used in the next five years to keep towards that target. So previously we had, I think I’m going to get this wrong, an 80 or 90% reduction target, and now it's 100%. So if we look here on how the carbon budgets are required to reduce, but where they are, more likely to go. You can see that we are having quite a divergence here in where they need to go, which is the lighter blue line and where they're likely to go, which is the darker blue line. So clearly we do have quite a challenge here between where we should be and where we are.

So COVID-19, we've all been affected by COVID-19. I'm actually self-isolating at the moment with my son, who tested positive earlier this week - he's fine. It has had the impact on everybody this year, obviously. But one thing was that, particularly over the summer when we had the full lock down that the carbon emissions did drop substantially. Fundamentally, down to transport, but also linked to reduction in power with a tiny residential increase. Now interestingly, it apparently it is more environmentally sustainable to work at home in the summer and go to work in the winter. It will be quite interesting to see over this winter when we're still quite a large proportion of us working from home, what happens to emissions in terms of heating: although it doesn't use anything near the emissions on surface water.

So, that's just reflecting on how basically and we have a big shock to the system in terms of behaviour change. And really, it's one of the things that policymakers are thinking about is a) How do you get the positive elements around reducing the emissions in the summer to continue? but also, how can you achieve such big step changes in behaviour without maybe needing a virus to do it? So pathways to Net Zero here, and we're looking at, if you look on the left, we have the historical. So the last 20 years that's the direction of global emissions. Going up, slightly plateauing, and then really various pathways needed to get us down to achieve the Paris Agreement. So the whole reason for net zero is that, globally, net zero should help to keep emissions to below 1.5 degrees Celsius of global warming by the end of the century. So plausible Routes to Net zero.

This is based on a report that the Committee on Climate Change put together last year which leads to the target being adopted by government. It is basically plausible, not necessarily easily achievable, but plausible ways of getting to net zero. And so there are various aspects here. It does concern me with road transport and they just talk about EV's because I think it's not about carrying on driving and just going over to an electric vehicle, but also the things around active travel. Potentially again working in with the transport industry. A lot of discussion around things like car free cities, road charging, all sorts of elements, considering every aspect to actually look at how to reduce those carbon emissions. And that's it from me, so I'm happy to take questions and answers there in the next session.

Matt: OK, Rachel, thank you so much. That's absolutely marvellous. Shall we go over to the Q&A session now?

Robyn: Yes, I think that sounds very sensible.

Matt: Excellent, we've got a few questions coming in on the chat, in fact, you can see the last question there, I mean it's a weighty tome.

Robyn: Yes, I haven't dissected that one yet. Sorry, you’ll have to give me a moment.

Matt: So if you would like, there was a question a bit earlier in the chat which I'm happy to read out for you.

Robyn: Well I thought we might begin because it's an interesting point. Nick Boldrini raised one that struck me too about the drop of emissions during Covid. He asks, How does that emission drop compare? How does that compare to where we need to be? Is that the right amount of reduction, more than needed or not enough? What's terrifying to me, because I came to Britain already as a 30 year old in 1991, is that it is barely a blip against the emissions rise since 1991. It doesn't even get close to getting us back to 1991, even when things just completely shut down over summer. So perhaps Rachel would like to talk a little bit more about why things have just blown out so much. But this is something that again we can communicate that people didn't all have miserable lives before 1991 or before 2000. Rachel, over to you.

Rachel: Sums it up. Freezing cold houses, though, to be fair.

Robyn: Ah yes, don’t get me started on heating, that’s a misunderstanding.

Rachel: I guess it's probably many, many reasons, I think sometimes a lot of embodied carbon is actually built into that. I’m a child of the 1970s and sometimes we look back. If you ever go to, and I'm sure a lot of you have got this in in your organisations. If you look at a house from those times when they've been kept as they were. We just had a lot less stuff, a lot less things plugged in. I guess heating was less, like its industrial process is, but then again they were. I mean the industrial processes were probably more polluting. Emissions, and things like coal fires and things were still around. I think if you look at the calculations around the emissions reductions in April. I've heard that they are not enough to get to net zero, but I'm not sure about the whole year compared with 1990, so I'm probably not as informed as you on that, but I think generally we're just much more disposable in everything we do and we just we just have more stuff and we use that. Sorry, that's not a very scientific answer, but that's my understanding.

Matt: OK, thank you. It's an interesting one. I had a comment somewhere that, in fact, technology accounts for a sizable percentage of emissions globally. So maybe we shouldn't be running these webinars. Oh, I'm really guilty now.

Rachel: Oh yes, definitely, datacentres do use up more…

Matt: Yes, there you go.

Rachel: …and produce more carbon than aviation, and I think there's a couple of things you can do. I think, every time you Google, it's the same as a car moving 2 metres.

Matt: Oh, my word. Now I'm feeling really guilty.

Rachel: There are sustainable search engines which, every time you Google, plant a tree.

Matt: Oh yes, we use that one.

Rachel: It's interesting, actually, on the project I did with Sara a couple of years ago, I remember talking to somebody about books, about books being more sustainable than everything being online. So interesting point, interesting area.

Robyn: Yes, it leads very nicely on to the question there in the chat from Clare Maguire. She says in current public discussion, there's been some back and forth between the effectiveness of personal climate action versus the need for systematic change. It can feel like an Individual cannot make a difference, especially in countries where support for climate action isn't being reflected by the national government and you can see that with this sort of thing there's so much going on that you feel like a rabbit in the headlights and Claire asks, do you have practical tips for effective advocacy that can counter the feeling of personal or local helplessness in the face of systems that seem impossible to change? And I think that's the really important question for us. I think there are some answers, but Elan, would you like to make some comment from that?

Elan: Yes, I mean I think this is such a big question, especially in in the USA. It's also related to Sara’s question about institutional missions for cultural institutions, Isn't it all just a drop in the bucket? And I think the answer is that everybody needs to think of themselves as having, basically, three roles in in this fight.

The first is their own role in reducing emissions. And in the US, while the national government isn't right now aligned with reducing its emissions, people in the United States can actually have a huge impact on emissions because being an American carries with it so many greenhouse gas emissions. If you fly from DC to San Francisco and back, that flight is the same as the average emissions of somebody living in India for an entire year. So there are decisions that you can make in your daily lives, particularly if you're the kind of person that's travelling around the country, maybe not right now during Covid, but in general, that can have a global impact on emissions.

The second thing is your role as a member of a community. So are you talking to friends and family about climate change? Are you active in your community discussions? I recently joined a local community hearing on transportation policy in DC and I was the only resident on the hearing and so they turned to me and they said, Well, what do residents think? And I had this enormous this enormous influence over this discussion, because I was the only resident, which probably wasn't wise on their part.

And then the third thing is as a voter. Climate is on the ballot; it is a policy issue and think about your vote and not just nationally but locally. The states have a tremendous amount of control over admissions and so do state legislatures. And this just isn't just true in the United States. It's true around the world that local elections matter a great deal for the climate. And so I think if you are able to present a solution set that goes along those three lines to individuals, there's always something they could be doing about climate change.

Robyn: Yes, that's right, sorry, Sara, did you want to say something about that? You've asked the question: how do we use cultural heritage to help people find truth in climate stories? But I bet you’ve got some ideas.

Sara: It probably comes back to what I was saying earlier, elements about telling stories and cultural heritage has always been about interpretation of objects and places, so we're using a skill set or we could use a skill set that's actually quite inherent in the types of professionals that we are. It's just perhaps about using that skill set to tell a slightly different story. And also to make it personal, I was actually thinking of Professor Catherine Hill who's was very good at this. Now I'll put the link to some of her materials in the chat.

Robyn: I don't know how many of you been looking at the picture we've got as the background. We've got a few different, I hope, slightly provocative pictures to show you in the background. I think that picture says something about what we can do as well, which is there we have a building that has runs very effectively with wind towers and behind it is a building that requires air conditioning. We are often looked at as if we were this little artistic decoration on the edge. Oh yes, of course. Heritage will suffer. Well, actually heritage has many of the answers because it had to. It had to run before you were using lots of fossil fuels. So I think we have to be challenging, as well, some of the assumptions that people are making, and I don't know how the panel feels, but I’ve found myself that that falls on very welcome ground. It's perhaps to do with that idea that people trust us, and what we're saying, we're not selling a product. A lot of our problems is selling products, and perhaps that's why they trust us. Back to you all to comment. I tell you what, I'll pick out of the blue Caitlin. Do you want to say something about all of this?

Caitlin: How did I know you were going to put me on the spot here? Well, I was just thinking this is obviously a really interesting topic and so many of these aspects of how heritage can actually influence the future, and not only in the way that we are building our buildings, but in the way that we are shaping our policies, and I think it's of course really wonderful that we have Elan and Rachel here. And I was just curious, maybe you guys could touch on this, but how do we communicate the fact that we have answers, for example, with this particular picture, and old architecture? I was actually on a webinar right before this or workshop on futures literacy and we were talking about ways to envision the future and we were talking about the importance of informing the future through the past, and I think that this is a similar idea, but we have this concept now about you have to build buildings, we use concrete because it's cheap, but we all know that concrete is one of the most carbon intensive materials we can use. So how do we stop looking at building buildings that are fast and cheap but actually start informing ourselves about more traditional techniques and materials that are more sustainable not only in terms of their carbon footprint, but also in terms of the fact that they're going to last a lot longer? And I think that this is something that maybe is a policy question and how do we kind of influence that conversation? So I don't know if either Elan or Rachel have any thoughts about that?

Elan: Sure, it's a really great point. Two things come to mind right off the bat. The first is I'm interested in the partnership between cultural institutions and universities. So the ways that we can be, not only communicating to the public, but educating the future generation of architects or the future generation of urban planners. And so are there partnership opportunities for cultural institutions and universities in those certificate or training or master’s programmes that allow for looking, not only at the science of cement, but at solution set that is about looking at the heritage? I'd be very interested in that, and the second thing is that the one thing that all local governments have in common is that they do not have enough capacity to be doing what they're doing. No matter where you are, it they're just overburdened and overstretched. For example in DC the urban planning design team has to manage how every single neighbourhood in DC looks and they're always hungry for new ideas or reports or new studies and so I would think about can you get in touch with local government design and urban planning offices on these possibilities. In other words, it's not just about communicating to the public, it's also about getting information into the hands, getting information directly into the hands of local decision makers.

Sara: That's very true.

Robyn: Rachel, did you want to say something? You've been working a lot on this.

Rachel: I think unfortunately it just comes down to cost and things like building regulations. My children, when they were younger, were always talking about: isn’t it amazing how these buildings have been here for thousands and thousands of years and how people didn't have the same skills that we have now? And I always remember my daughter commenting about why it is churches and castles never flood because we built them on hills.

I think a lot of it does come down to cost, and I know even talking to all sorts of different organisations that they can start off with plans which are very, very sustainable and using the best materials and very resilient. And then as they get further developed yet cost engineered out, I think that relates to all sorts of things I. I do think it's a policy element. The big challenges that policymakers seem to be incapable of thinking of net zero on the adaptation agenda at the same time, one or the other. So we have concerns.

My expertise, which is probably why I'm stumbling on some of the low carbon issues, because my expertise is actually much more on the on the adaptation side. And when we're looking at things like having properties very energy efficient, but maybe not done in a very sustainable way. You then end up with people in tower blocks, as we did this summer, getting to 40 degrees. I think both agendas need to be addressed together and probably more in terms of standards. One of the challenges in Liverpool where I live is when they had the housing market renewal programme, all new homes had to have very high levels of energy efficiency. So the cheapest way to do that was to make them airtight so they are just full of mould and big problems, asthma and things like that, just because it was just done as cheaply as possible. So I think you have to spend money, basically there isn't always a cheap way to achieve this.

Robyn: I think sometimes we are starting at the wrong end though and to me one of the critical problems is the busting of all our feedback loops. One of the reasons those buildings have lasted so well in being adaptable and usable, because the people understood how they worked and learned from mistakes and improved so if you think about overheating, you find that in the Georgian period you get awnings almost immediately. You get the first large glass windows and they soon work out that they boil themselves and they put out things and you get awnings everywhere and they disappear in this country somewhere in in England and somewhere in the middle part of the 20th century, probably just because they were unfashionable. But they work. They work really well. They are low energy there's a lot of things that we've just forgotten. We run our old buildings as if they are modern buildings which require you to run heating and seal up, and then we take out the things that made them work in the first place, we seal them up and they fail in that way too, and it's a disaster all around. I just don't think we're very good at building these days. In truth, I think we're really bad at It because we don't have those feedback loops.

Rachel: I think I think you're right about these old ideas. I mean, just think about shutters. Yes, I used to have shutters when I grew up and they were amazing at keeping the house warmer.

Robyn: This is one my particular soapbox is on. It took me years to notice this. I came from a background in wall paintings and we'd find fictive wall paintings on the walls of castles and so, and above that were the hooks to hang real effective tapestries and then the hooks to hang real tapestries and the paint ran over the hooks so you knew they were contemporary and I just couldn't figure that out until I realised they recognise that we actually lose most of our heat, not into the air, but into the surfaces around us and what they did was hang cloths on the surface to break that. The tapestries were high-end, but everybody had cloth. That's why you had painter clothmakers and the upholsterers were actually called the upholders because they stuck the cross around and you look at old illustrations, no marginalia and so of interiors and you'll find it's really hard to find an interior that doesn't have cloths hanging on the walls. We pulled them all off and then we said, Oh it's cold.

Matt: OK, shall we...? You have but if anyone's interested, there is a webinar on that very subject, a recording of which you can access and I'll give you a link to that. We've got a couple more questions before we run out of time, I think. There is one here from Deborah, surely a lot of excess consumption is related to modern expectations, and I think that's absolutely right, of what their lives should be like. People thinking, it's fine to put on the heat or heat on in the winter when they haven't put a second jumper on or even the first jumper. You're supposed to be a bit chilly, so how can cultural heritage institutions demonstrate that those sorts of luxuries are something we've never had before and can't afford to have to any extent now? I absolutely agree with that, that statement and I think you probably do, Robyn, because you've talked on it.

Robyn: Yes, so I won't say anything more. I'll leave it to the others to pick up on this. We haven't heard from Sarah. Sarah, would you like to comment on that? Is that too evil?

Sarah: No, but thank you for asking. During this time of Covid, I've examined my own consumption patterns and realised that it's as much a shift in attitude and a willing decision to change habits. It was a marvellous conversation yesterday where the whole discussion was that climate change is a human behaviour issue and tackling it from the strategy of human behaviour which follows on that design and policy and our travel choice. Everything else, understanding human behaviour and how the human mind works as it addresses climate change is one of the most powerful levels levers we have and when we can figure out how to use that in all of the avenues of our work, starting with personal consumption but expanding all the way up to how you have a conversation with a policy person. Human behaviour is key to all of this.

Matt: Yes, there is another point here that someone else has made, Freya has made. Has anyone done any research about looking into the acceptable retrofits to older buildings and included wall hangings as an option? Over to you, Robyn again, I think.

Robyn: Well, we haven't done. This is one of the things we really want to do. We do have a UCL PhD running that will be looking at exactly this sort of thing. But it would be nice to try it out. I'm hoping to persuade Grosvenor Estates to be trying it out soon. So if people would like to try it. Part of the problem is how to monitor. The reason that we use air temperature as the guide for comfort is just because it's really easy to measure. And, of course, the thermometer wasn’t invented until the eighteenth century. Before that, they used themselves. The best monitor for your comfort was you yourself, but now nobody trusts it. They’ll often look at the thing on the wall and say, Oh, I must be cold. I must be hot, because it says that I should be. Very strange. But yes, all for doing more research on this, If people would like to get in touch with some suggestions, that will be very welcome.

Elan: Sorry, I just want to come in on this if I may…

Robyn: Oh, Freya, you’ve done the research, of course. Yes. Excellent.

Elan: On this question of comfort, I agree that we could all find ways to reduce our energy consumption. But maybe this is going to be an unpopular opinion in this discussion, but there is nothing about transitioning to renewable energy, or electric cars, or new modes of agricultural production or industrial production that will require any decrease in comfort. And, in fact, when people describe it in that way, it may create some barriers towards policy change. Should we all be using less energy? Yes, of course. We should always be thinking of how we can use our negative impact on others. But, at the same time, there is nothing about this transition that would require anybody to be less comfortable than they are now. So, that’s my unpopular opinion, possibly, for this group.

Rachel: I think I’d like to respond on that. I think the biggest issue now, personally, is that climate change has been decoupled from economic growth. So, if you look at the charts now, economic growth has been going up, carbon emissions have been going down. I think the biggest issue now is the social implications. So we talk about electric vehicles that they won’t compromise our comfort, but they're pretty expensive. At the moment the only people who can go to work, have to go to work, not so much now but in the early days when we returned, were people on low incomes. So I think there's I think there is quite a challenge around the social, what we call it a just transition, because I think those of us who can afford it's easy, but I think it's less easy for some people on lower incomes.

Robyn: That’s very much in the West, though it's interesting because I know we've got a few people who have been working on the vernacular architecture around the world, and, of course, in many climates where people are very poor, they handle this very well. And if we're talking about a green recovery, we seem to forget that people need jobs, and thinking about the privileging of making things fast and stupidly, there's much a lot of employment used to occur in doing things slowly and well. Those were also very gratifying jobs. Even now, when the happiest young people I've ever met are the stonemasons. So what do people think about our role in in that wider economy? It's certainly being on the agenda here, with all the COVID recovery funds. How we support those businesses doing building at that level. But I think it has wider social implications that are really positive. What do other people think? I'll pick it at random.

Sara: I might jump in actually, Robyn, if I may.

Robyn: Oh, please do.

Sara: It's a theme that I found myself coming back to in various aspects. That there is always the danger of when we think of heritage and cultural heritage as ‘other’ in any respect. I know this is going to come up in webinars further on in the series, but the idea of mainstreaming and that hand skills craft skills, if these things were seen as more part and parcel of this to a wider ecosystem of training and jobs and all the rest of it, then actually, we might make good progress. This is a controversial notion, that defining ourselves separately as the cultural heritage sector sometimes might be a disadvantage, but I think I may just have opened a grand old can of worms halfway through Friday afternoon.

Robyn: No, but it's a good can of worms. I want to say thank you to Rachel who has to sign off in a moment and she's been absolute brick doing this. Thank you so much, Rachel. Really appreciated.

Rachel: You're welcome, thank you goodbye everybody.

Robyn: Bye bye. Yes, one thing before we all start signing off on our Fridays. One thing that that I thought it might be useful to raise to the panel. We've gotten, and perhaps people in the audience who might like to comment on this as well, I think there are a few people who could, which is the scope three emissions? When we come to count, this is the problem about looking locally, there's a tendency to outsource all our emissions, and certainly you see that with the emissions rising in places like India and China, which at least largely could be attributed to making stuff for us rather than for themselves. How do we? How do we start dealing with that? Because again, we have a locus in in that internationalism as well. Elan, perhaps.

Elan: Yes, I think it's a great question. I think this is where you get into the difficulty in addressing all of those issues without a policy environment in place. Because it's obviously possible to control your own emissions. You can also control or affect the emissions of your vendors or supply chain or whatever, but when it gets to leakage, this is where it really is about policy. That is the role of government, to ensure that people are not externalising their negative costs onto others, and to make sure that people internalise both the benefits and costs that they're seeing. So I think that it's extremely important to be aware of where are we just leaking emissions on to other places, but also to be able to conceptualise the policy environment in that way. Yes, I think it's super important, at least in the United States.

Robyn: Oh, it's the same here. I can even give an interesting example that a lot of small stone quarries are going broke because the local authorities won't allow their stone to be used because it's considered not green in comparison to Chinese mined stone that's brought over. And the reason for that is they don't count the carbon until it hits the decks here. All the rest of it is not included. Let me see, who shall I pick on now? Sara, we've not heard that much from you. Would you like to give you some final thoughts? Perhaps about this? Or where we need to go.

Sara: I'm struggling to improve on anything that I've heard so far. I appreciate the opportunity. We really have had some very valuable insights and some good conversations. I just want to encourage people to continue them and carry them all the way through to the COP and all the way back home.

Robyn: That's true, that's a lovely thought. Caitlin, you want to give some final thoughts?

Caitlin: It's been such an engaging conversation. I would just love to extend my thanks again to Elan into Rachel for joining us. And, of course, to Robyn and Sara for moderating in their presentation. And of course to Sarah Sutton for being my partner in the organising this. But I think we're all really on the same page here. It's about good streams of communication. It’s about talking with our local communities, with each other, with our policymakers. It's about looking at our internal and our own carbon footprint. It's about understanding the bigger scope of where the carbon is coming from. So there's a lot of different elements here, but I think that one of the most important things, of course, is that we work together and I think that if we can come at this from all different angles, then we're going to be really successful, and I think that it's so wonderful that we have these types of programmes where we can raise awareness about how important our role is as the cultural heritage sector and how massively powerful we are. So I look forward to working together with all of you to make the world a better place.

Robyn: Yes, I think we are powerful because we can offer some solutions, whereas most people are just offering the problems. Elan, would you like to give some final thoughts?

Elan: Just thank you so much for having me. My journey and environmentalism began in the cultural institution sector. I grew up in DC and became infatuated with climate change through dinosaurs, at the Smithsonian's at a very young age, and so this is all very comforting and familiar to me, to be having this kind of discussion, because it's my own journey, so just thank you so much for having me.

Robyn: Thank you so, so much. Sara, it's over to you to finish off, I think.

Sara: Thank you, yes, I'm going to take on the task of saying a huge thanks so everyone who's made this happen today, but there's a huge amount of effort that goes on behind the scenes as well with both at Historic England and with Caitlin and Sarah as part of the working group, and it's a good model that we might all bear in mind that actually working together many hands make light work, and that if we carry on being the positive folks that I think we are in our sector, we will make that positive change. So I get to leave us at the end of Friday on a happy note. Follow the links in the chat. Go there or go to talk to other people and everyone. If we do it, we might just turn the tide. That's my hope.

Robyn: We've got to try. Thank you so much, everyone. In particular, thanks to Matt, who's been an absolute star as ever and kept us all on the road. Thank you so much everybody. Have a lovely weekend.

Matt: Robyn, thank you so much.