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As climate change causes increasingly severe natural disasters, its also increasingly threatening our art, culture, and shared history. In the recent Los Angeles wildfires, billions of dollars in fine art may have been consumed; architectural gems by Richard Neutra, Gregory Ain, and others were destroyed; and the warehouse of Belmont Music Publishing, a repository chronicling Austrian-American composer Arnold Schoenberg, was lost in what the composers son called a profound cultural blow.” For museums, archives, and libraries, which often operate as nonprofits on limited budgets, meeting these increased risks poses significant financial constraints. This challenge has sparked global efforts to bolster the resilience of a range of cultural artifacts. Weve now had three pretty large fires in a row, starting with the 2021 Marshall Fire in Colorado, to Lahaina in Hawaii in 2023, and now L.A., said Christina Cain, emergency programs manager for the Foundation for Advancement in Conservation (FAIC). Unfortunately, this isnt going away. More than half of U.S. galleries, libraries, archives, and museums reported increased water and moisture damage between 2017 and 2019, with 10% of that coming directly from natural disasters. Climate change mapping by the FAIC has shown that coastal areas and those near rivers remain at high risk of flooding. A third of U.S. museums reside within 62 miles of the coast, according to Elizabeth Merritt, the in-house futurist at the American Alliance of Museums. Studies from Greece and elsewhere have shown that changing climates, especially increased heat and humidity, will take a toll on ancient monuments, buildings, and artworks. A conservator stabilizes the surface of a painted wooden boat model from Egypt. [Photo: Penn Museum] The initiatives working to combat ths are as varied as the sites, collections, and cultural treasures theyre meant to protect. Theres even a National Heritage Responders helpline in the U.S., a phone and email resource staffed with conservation experts meant to provide institutions with emergency assistance before, during, and after disasters. Cain worked the phone lines during wildfires in her home state of Colorado; during the Marshall Fire, she assisted curators at the Superior Historical Museum, which was consumed by the blaze. In addition to helping them find professionals for salvage operations, figure out how to deal with smoke damage, and process insurance claims, Cain also helped other museums in the pre-evacuation zone prepare in case the fire spread. There has long been an understanding that artwork, institutions, and cultural sites are threatened by natural disasters. In 1966, the Arno River flooded its banks in Florence, Italy, submerging churches, museums, and storehouses of historical treasures with up to three meters of mud. The work of volunteers and citizenscalled angeli del fango, or the Mud Angels, became an international story. More than half a century later, such storms have become more common and severe. In 2018, Hurricane Maria wreaked havoc on Puerto Ricos cultural scene; many institutions sustained millions of dollars in damage, with curators trying to limit the long-term impact. At one contemporary art museum, workers cut vents into the wall to allow air to circulate, preventing art-wrecking mildew and humidity from building up in a building bereft of mechanical systems. Historic Buildings and Sites’ staff assessing the Interior Cupula at the Puerto Rico State Capitol in March 2022. The assessment included a detailed report on the conditions of Venetian mosaics, ornamental plasterwork, and stained glass elements. [Photo: Héctor J. Berdecía-Hernández/CENCOR/Centro de Conservacion y Restauracion de Puerto Rico.] The recent Los Angeles wildfires, which spread to dense urban neighborhoods, have been a worrisome development, says Sarah Sutton, cofounder and CEO of Environment and Culture Partners, which focuses on the cultural sectors environmental leadership. They underscore how climate change has placed more areas where we liveand store our records and artifactsin harms way. Rising awarenessand sea levelshave meant some sites have received` outsized attention, and expensive investments in resiliency. The Smithsonian in Washington, D.C. is building a system of flood gates and stormwater systems, while San Franciscos Ferry Building may be lofted up to seven feet by the Army Corp of Engineers in an effort to protect it from rising sea levels, part of a proposed $13.5 billion waterfront protection plan for the city. This kind of engineering feat, however, isn’t possible for the vast majority f sites. For other institutions, the typical playbook involves revisiting disaster and evacuation plans and creating more sustainable operations. Many have taken to hardening existing structures to help prevent flooding and wind damage. In 2021, for instance, Miamis Vizcayaa landmark 1916 home and garden on the waterfrontinstalled a system of Tiger Dams, water-inflatable tubes to prevent flooding, to protect the grounds from hurricane storm surges. Groundskeepers have also slowly swapped out plants across the site, planting gardens that can better handle saltwater infiltration. And in 2019, a floating flood wall installed at the National Archives in Washington, D.C. helped protect the Bill of Rights and other treasures from flooding. Alternatively, museums can invest in shoreline restoration and natural defenses to absorb floodwaters. In 2023, the Ford House museum and residence on Lake St. Clair in Michigan was awarded a $7 million grant from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to restore damaged coastline, which will stop erosion, absorb floodwaters, and better protect the site. The Ford House museum. [Photo: Andrew Jameson/Wiki Commons] Digitizing collections to serve as a backup is also something that is underfunded and underappreciated; many small museums have their databases on site. Communicating proactively with local emergency management professionals can help make them aware of at-risk collections and include them in the institution’s own evacuation planning. Curators have also moved collections from basements to upper levels, and even created the museum equivalent of a go bag, storing the most important artifacts in a way that makes it easy to pick them up and move when disaster strikes. UNESCO, the United Nations cultural heritage organization, recently held a global conference, Fire Resilience for Heritage in a Changing Climate, which included the release of best practices for prevention, including how to develop fire risk management plans and how to integrate Indigenous and native knowledge to manage landscapes for fire prevention. There’s funding available to help institutions plan for disaster: The National Endowment for the Humanities offers grants for its Resilience Resources project, and some states, like Colorado, offer their own grants. In Alaska, which has some of the fastest-rising temperatures due to climate change, the National Park Service has enlisted Inflation Reduction Act funds to help prepare historic sites for climate shifts by collaborating with tribal elders to map out key monuments and utilize Indigenous knowledge to protect the landscape. Like with the wider impact of climate change, the damage will be spread in an inequitable manner, in many cases threatening smaller institutions that don’t have the resources to adapt. When you lose a small-town history museum, which had archives about that town and collections from families that had been there for decades, its irreplaceable and heartbreaking, said Cain. You cant tell the story of that place without them. Without them, is there a community? What holds that town together?
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In 2019, President Donald Trump appointed a lawyer named Mark Lee Greenblatt to root out fraud, abuse, and corruption in the Department of the Interior. Greenblatt quickly got to work, directing his 270 staff members to conduct audits, inspections, and investigations across the agency of 70,000 federal employees, which oversees 30% of the United Statess natural resources, 20% of its public lands, and its relationships with 573 Native American tribes and villages. He found that a gas marketing outfit conspired to defraud oil and gas companies on leased federal land, a Bureau of Land Management employee viewed pornography on a government computer, a tribal police officer stole $40,000 earmarked for a tribal youth diversion program, and three offshore oil rig workers and three companies acted negligently in a 2012 incident that resulted in a deadly explosion. And that was just in the span of two months in 2019. Until last week, Greenblatt was one of 73 inspectors general working within the United States governmentindependent watchdogs that keep tabs on federal agencies, which all in all collect more than $4 trillion in revenue every year and spend more than $6 trillion. On Friday night, he and 17 of his colleagues were summarily dismissed, in contravention of U.S. law. President Trump fired me last night, Greenblatt wrote in a post on LinkedIn over the weekend. Its all just so surreal. The firings leave the Department of Interior, the Department of Energy, the Environmental Protection Agency, and other departments that shape the countrys environmental and climate policy without independent oversight. This comes at a moment of extreme tumult and uncertainty as Trump attempts to transform the federal government in his image. In his first several days in office, the Trump administration instructed federal health agencies to temporarily stop communicating with the public and ordered a freeze on the disbursal of federal grants, though that order was later rescinded. All of this is so corrosive, said an EPA employee who asked Grist not to name them out of fear of retaliation. Trump is corrupting the health of every federal office with paranoia and distrust. How is anyone supposed to operate under such conditions? Legal experts and nonprofit groups suspect Trump will replace the fired inspectors general with devotees who will ignore malfeasance, corruption, and abusea shift that would put the countrys environmental policies and American public health at risk. Trumps effort to terminate the current roster of IGs and, if one allows oneself to speculate, install loyalists who will turn a blind eye to what is to come, is unprecedented and profoundly troubling, said Michael Burger, the executive director of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia University. Federal employees at regional offices and agency headquarters in Washington, D.C. fear their internal reports and complaints will be ignored or dismissed outright, putting Americans at risk. One important role of inspectors general is to offer federal employees protection if they experience reprisal at work after reporting corruption or impropriety. EPA scientists who raised alarms in 2019 and 2020 about the agency improperly downgrading the cancer risks of chemicals, for example, called their inspector general hotline to report that they were retaliated against by their own agency for blowing the whistle. Sean ODonnell, who Trump appointed as the EPAs inspector general in 2020, launched an investigation to determine whether there had been a violation of these employees rights under U.S. whistleblower protection law and found that three of the five scientists had had their requests for vacation time rejected, monetary awards withheld, and arbitrarily received poor performance reviews. The office of the inspector general recommended that the EPA administrator consider appropriate corrective action. ODonnell, who has been scrupulous about monitoring the disbursal of funds from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and Inflation Reduction Act passed under former president Joe Biden was one of the 18 inspectors general fired by Trump last week. The Inflation Reduction Act, which authorized more than $300 billion in clean energy incentives and grants, allocates money to support independent oversight of this spending, including new funding for inspector general offices. The majority of the funding from that law has already been disbursed, and Trump has moved to freeze what remains as he attempts to restructure the government. Legal experts say that move is illegal and unconstitutional, but even if a judge lifts the freeze, the watchdogs tasked with scrutinizing these funds will no longer be at their posts. All of the checks and balances have been stripped, said Kyla Bennett, Northeast and Mid-Atlantic director for Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, a group that offers pro bono assistance to whistleblowers within federal agencies. Federal employees, she added, cant do the work that they need to do to protect the American people. And that is the point. The president downplayed the firings over the weekend. Its a very standard thing to do, he told reporters. But the only other president who fired more than a dozen inspectors general in one go was Ronald Reagan, and Congress has since imposed restrictions on abrupt changes to these positions. Burger explained that the dismissals are in violation of the law, which requires notice, and an explanation to Congress. The White House is supposed to give 0 days warning before removing an inspector general. The firings disturbed lawmakers on both sides of the aisle., I dont understand why one would fire individuals whose mission is to root out waste, fraud, and abuse, Republican Senator Susan Collins, from Maine, told Politico. Senator Elizabeth Warren, from Massachusetts, said in a post on X that Trump is paving the way for widespread corruption, and many other prominent Democrats voiced similar concerns. Many Republican members of Congress, however, were unruffled. Hes the boss, Senator Tommy Tuberville, a Republican from Alabama, told Politico. We need to clean house. This article originally appeared in Grist, a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future. Sign up for its newsletter here.
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Todays fast-paced workplace requires us to change and adapt at increasing speeds, while managing complex interpersonal demands. Despite these challenges, we can utilize emotional intelligence to meet these continually increasing demands and excel in our new reality. The basis of emotional intelligence is the ability to recognize, understand, and manage our emotionsas well as know how they impact others. Beyond that, emotional intelligence gives us greater ability to understand the emotions of others, allowing for greater empathy. This in turn increases our ability to work effectively with others of different backgrounds and perspectives. Glenn Llopis, author of Make Reinvention Your Superpower, argues that a lack of emotional intelligence traps people in what he calls “career quicksand.” He explains that this occurs when individuals lose sight of their unique capabilities because they are rewarded for following the corporate playbook instead of their own. As a result, they are not encouraged to explore new ideas, having been trained to believe that success relies on executing old ones. How to encourage emotional intelligence Organizations are increasingly becoming aware that being successful today requires more collaboration, creativity, and adaptability. Research at Lawrence Technological University found that emotional intelligence improves ones ability to be socially effective, and can lead to improved collaborative outcomes. Successful organizations in todays climate will be comprised of emotionally intelligent people who can pivot quickly. The good news is that emotional intelligence is not some innate quality; its something you can build. Employees at all levels of the organization will need to boost their collaboration, problem-solving, and teamwork skills. One way to encourage these traits is for leaders to ask every employee to share examples of collaboration, good teamwork, and problem-solving during staff meetings. They can set up an easy-to-use process whereby staff can recognize each other when they demonstrate using emotional intelligence in their daily work. Having an emotional intelligence employee-of-the-month recognition program can also help keep the focus on continuous improvement. Finally, managers can also ensure that employees are aware that empathy and resilience are attributes that will make workers more likely to get a promotion. Building collaboration and conflict-resolution skills Organizations of the future will need to collaborate more both internally and externally. Having employees who are able to work with various people of different cultural backgrounds will increase team and organizational cohesiveness. Llopis emphasizes the importance of using emotional intelligence to approach workplace diversity with curiosity. This mindset helps uncover valuable insights and opportunities for growth. “When we look around with intentionality and expect to discover something new, we open ourselves to seeing possibilities we might have overlooked, he says. Conflict and problems inevitably arise at work. But because organizations must move so quickly, teams must be able to solve these issues quickly and effectively. Unresolved frustrations, unexpected changes, anxiety, and disappointment in organizations can lead to a negative and toxic workplace quite quickly if workers dont have the tools they need. Emotional-intelligence training teaches people to work through these common workplace issues without losing track of what they are trying to accomplish. These workers are better able to navigate difficult conversations that lead to better acceptance and understanding with their peers and leaders. The ability to work through difficult interpersonal relationship challenges leads to increased optimism and stronger growth mindsets for those who go through them. Llopis says that self-trust is central to emotional intelligence and reinvention, enhancing one’s ability to manage workplace conflict. “By cultivating a deep understanding of oneself and confidence in one’s abilities, self-assurance empowers employees to navigate their own challenges and support others, fostering deeper connections and adaptability in high-stress work environments,” he says. The value of an emotionally intelligent culture Companies that invest in supporting emotional intelligence find that their culture shows improvement. The results of an environment of collaboration are greater freedom to be creative and experiment with new solutions and innovations. Open communication and dialogue become part of how everyone in the organization is expected to conduct themselves. This results in an atmosphere of psychological safety, which allows everyone the freedom to experiment, take some risks, and push their own boundaries so they can reach their full potential. Organizations that put a high emphasis on emotional intelligence in their recruitment, onboarding, and training process will find they are molding their organizations in a manner that allows all of their people to have more fulfilling careers. Nurturing empathy and resilience means everyone has a supportive environment where everyone can reinvent themselves while keeping the organization moving forward.
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