Preservation & Climate : Historic New England tackles climate change. Joie Grandbois, Director of Sustainability

Happy Planet Wednesday!

Join us as we explore the intersection of historic preservation and climate action with Joie Grandbois, Director of Sustainability at Historic New England. Discover how preserving historic buildings can contribute to sustainability, resilience, and climate education, and learn practical strategies for making historic sites more eco-friendly.


 keywords

historic preservation, sustainability, climate action, historic New England, resilience, energy efficiency, climate education, embodied carbon, preservation easements, community engagement


 key  topics

Intersection of historic preservation and climate action
Energy efficiency upgrades in historic buildings
Resilience planning for historic sites
Community engagement in climate initiatives
Innovative sustainability strategies for preservation


 
"Simple steps can dramatically reduce energy loss"
"Upgrading gutters can prevent flooding and damage"
"Local action drives global change"


Chapters

00:00 Introduction and Context
02:44 Historic New England's Mission and Role
04:10 Preservation and Climate Action
09:51 The Value of Historic Buildings
16:22 Historic House Easements and Their Significance
20:16 Shifting Perspectives on Sustainability in Preservation
23:22 Sustainability Initiatives Across New England
26:05 Climate Action Goals and Strategies
27:37 Site-Specific Climate Action Planning
32:18 Communicating Climate Action to Visitors
42:05 Personal Journey into Sustainability and Preservation
49:37 Optimism for the Future of Climate Action

 resources

Historic New England - https://www.historicnewengland.org/
Yale Climate Communication - https://climatecommunication.yale.edu/
Portland History Docents Program - https://portlandhistory.org/

 guest links

LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/joie-grandbois/

Transcript

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Abigail 0:07

Welcome to the podcast where we celebrate innovation for a happy planet. I am your host, Abigail Carroll. Sometimes I get lucky and people do my work for me. Joie Grandbois, Director of Sustainability at Historic New England, is one of those people. She reached out to me on LinkedIn and asked if she could come on the podcast to speak about historic preservation and climate change. I was all ears, and I think you will be too, as Joie and I discuss how tackling issues of climate change is both a necessary and important part of Historic New England's work in preserving and communicating about some of New England's most precious historic sites. Let's hear it from Joie. Welcome to the podcast, Joie.

Joie 0:53

I'm happy to be here. Thank you for having me

Abigail 0:56

You are the director of sustainability for Historic New England. Tell me a little bit about the mission of your organization.

Joie 1:04

Historic New England, which was originally founded as the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities, which runs a little less easily off the tongue than Historic New England does has been around for about, excuse me, about just over 100 years. And we are one of the most comprehensive regional preservation organizations in the United States. We have 30... 42 sites, including 38 historic house museums that are spread across five New England states in a variety of different towns, locations, and places and environments, so

Abigail 1:45

I've had the pleasure of seeing a few of these houses both in Maine and in Massachusetts. But so the, historic preservation, we don't think immediately about climate action and, So tell me, what role does historic preservation play in climate action planning?

Joie 2:05

Sure. There, there are multiple ways that preservation intersects with climate action. One of the most, A- and I will say, too they fall into different categories because historic preservation doesn't always mean a historic house museum, right? Historic preservation can mean everything from someone who lives in a historic home and wants to put a preservation easement on it. It can also mean, the far other end of, a historic house museum that is preserving a site and telling a specific story. And then, there's a lot of places that have historic buildings. I think of here in Biddeford, the Mill District, right? Is is is very historic. And so historic preservation plays a couple of roles. In the broader definition of preservation there is the idea that using the buildings that we have is better in a lot of cases than building a new building. In fact, there's a great phrase that I believe was coined by Carl Elefante who wrote Going for Zero, which is all about the built environment and climate change, that the greenest building is the one that already exists. And the Biddeford Mills are a great example of that, right? We have this huge mill complex with multiple buildings that have already been built. Energy has already been put into constructing them. And over the past, like decade or so, a lot of them have been converted into apartments or in some case condominiums and also space for businesses. And so being able to preserve those structures and repurpose them for something new rather than tearing them all down and building a completely new building, which is really emissions intensive which I could-- I should probably explain a little bit about what embodied carbon is. That's the, that's the-- Embodied carbon is the amount of energy and emissions that has gone into creating something, right? And that applies to everything from our phones to buildings. And so if you can repurpose something, then those emissions, which hopefully only happen once, right? In creating that object aren't create-- aren't released again. You are able to ke-keep the building. When we look at historic preservation in the context of historic house museums, there are... or other, structures that are used as a museum or education format we have-- I see that as two parts. We of course want to make sure that the sites we have preserved stick around for a long time, and in a lot of cases, many of those sites are threatened by things like sea level rise or increased storms or storm water runoff. And we-- there's that part of it, wanting to protect the sites. But historic sites also have a really unique opportunity in terms of climate education in that they are in a great place to be able to talk about change over time, and to be able to, if you're taking someone on the tour of a landscape you can talk about, how the shoreline has changed or how there are invasive species that have come in that are impacting the landscape, and in some cases not even having to mention climate change, right? You can talk about that change over time in a com- what feels for attendees at the site, like a completely normal conversation, right? So I think and I would say that's broader to, museums and cultural institutions in general. But I think historic preservation organizations, particularly those that have historic sites, have a really unique opportunity to talk about climate change and to educate without, we don't necessarily even have to be that direct about it in terms of saying,

Abigail 6:03

It's not you not being didactic because it's just an obvious conversation. The shoreline was here and now it's here. I do wanna kind of needle a little bit around this idea of, the the encapsuled carbon of an old a current dwelling is of more value, is more eco-friendly than a new house. Because I do think there's lots of people who would... Or despite the carbon footprint of demolishing and rebuilding the, a new sustainable house, maybe let's say it's made of bamboo, or let's say, it's got massive insulation and it doesn't, it consumes less energy to heat or to cool. Is there an argument... Is that a real argument or is it always, do we really is there, is it pretty much rule of thumb that if you better insulate an old house or, you can update, make updates on the existing structure that make it comparable for the next 50 years out in terms of energy usage and total encapsulated carbon?

Joie 7:08

Sure. Some of that depends on the building size. I mentioned Carl Alfante earlier. He talks about... A-and this is looking at much bigger buildings than a house, right? The example he uses is a skyscraper.

Abigail 7:21

Yeah. Yeah.

Joie 7:22

when-- And I believe the example he used was the Empire State Building as the old building versus building something completely, like a new high-rise. When a new high-rise is built, like brand new, and it has, all this glass on the outside that's, super insulating and all of that, versus, the Empire State Building, which was built earlier in the-- early in the 20th century. When you start to look at those buildings over time, a couple of things come up. So for instance, in that brand-new high-rise, it's-- that's completely glass on the outside, it's much more difficult to, say, replace one window because none of those things are going to, none of these things last forever, right? They have to be maintained. So whereas the Empire State Building, which, yes, had older windows, but those windows can be much more easily updated and retrofitted and in some cases may not have to be replaced. Over time, the Empire State Building is probably going to be less emissions-intensive just in terms of the structure even with upgrading for to make it better insulated and make the windows better so it's less drafty. When you're looking on a smaller scale, There are lots of options for upgrading an older building just in terms of energy usage. It's not that difficult to replace your gas or oil-fired furnace with a heat pump, right? And there are lots of ways. We actually have, This is not my, my team at Historic New England, but we have a whole team called Preservation Services that works with people who have historic house easements on their, or, his- on their property. And we have people who are able to, give them advice on how do you install this so that it keeps the historic integrity of the structure. So there are lots of options for, for that. There are options, too, even in terms of insulation, right? With insulating an old house. And in some cases, you don't even have to rip out the walls, and I'll actually share an example we have. 'Cause I think a lot of times when people think of insulation or re-insulating, they think you're tearing down all your Sheetrock or all your, plaster and lath if it's an older building, and then putting in insulation and then replacing that, right? We did a project at the Lyman Estate, which is in Waltham, Massachusetts and I believe it was done in 2012, but I may not have the year right on that where we... and this was before, before my before I arrived at Historic New England and before Historic New England had a dedicated sustainability person. But they really wanted to reduce the amount of energy that's being used in the structure, and one of the biggest places that they discovered there was energy loss was in the ballroom. Now we don't all have ballrooms, but in our houses,

Abigail 10:28

We have the same problem.

Joie 10:31

Ballroom

Abigail 10:31

That ballroom.

Joie 10:34

But it's still a great example because we looked at where is the heat loss happening, right? Where are we losing heat, which is requiring us to use a lot more energy to keep the space warm? And there were two things that came up, the windows and through the ceiling into the attic, right? Because in a lot of old houses that have attics, the ceilings were often... the attics were often not insulated. We did two things. We upgraded the windows. We did we worked to replace to fix the windows. We put exterior storms storms on them to help with insulation while being able to preserve the historic window. But the biggest change was- We put cellulose insulation in the attic and under the floorboards. We just went, moved some of the floorboards, put in that cellulose insulation. And the reason I specify the type of insulation is that there are a couple of things, particularly when you're looking at a historic house museum and you're making any changes you want to preserve the historic integrity of the building, and if you do have to make a significant change, you want it to be reversible. So the cellulose insulation can literally be, if we need to, can be v- basically vacuumed out very easily. So the ceiling was insulated, and the windows were upgraded, and it reduced the heat loss and energy use by 50%.

Abigail 11:59

Wow.

Joie 11:59

was just two simple changes, and this is in a large, cavernous room, right? Which just by its nature, even if it is insulated, is probably going to use more energy because heat rises, right? And that was... That's a pretty dramatic difference. That's a very significant difference in energy use and heat loss just by taking those two steps. And and no one said, "Let's tear down the ballroom and build a new one that's more energy efficient," right? Obviously that's probably not something you're going to do at a historic house museum. But it was just a g- a great example of how you can take some fairly simple steps to increase the energy efficiency, to help retain heat, without having to spend thousands upon thousands of dollars or rip out your walls. So there's a lot of ways-

Abigail 12:49

afraid of that.

Joie 12:50

Exactly. Exactly.

Abigail 12:53

So I'm thinking of people living in old houses that might be listening. You just mentioned people who might be getting historic house easements. What is a historic house? Like, how do you define that? Is that a house that's 100 years old, or is it the nature of the community that it's special in some way? Like how would one determine whether they could actually get a historic... This is a little bit outside the scope

Joie 13:17

Sure.

Abigail 13:17

conversation today, but I'm just kinda, I'm thinking about that.

Joie 13:20

I will say that is not my area of expertise, but I can speak to it a little bit. We have, First of all, I recommend, we have a preservation services team that works with people who want to do that I really recommend reaching out to them or, Because the way an easement works when you put, w- whether it's a conservation easement or it's an historic preservation easement or something like that, in most cases that easement, It there's sort of two parts to it. First of all, it's a legal document that is attached to the deed, right? So it doesn't matter if your home is sold or someone else inherits it, that passes on. The other thing is in most places, there's a requirement for a third party to actually be the easement holder, and that is to pre- I think is done mainly to prevent if it changes hands, someone just removes, updates the deed and removes the easement. In terms of whether something qualifies, there's a, there is a difference between putting a a historic preservation easement on your own property and doing something like applying to the National Register of Historic Places to have your spot designated as a historic site or a historic structure. So they're very different. They're different things, and they have different qualifications. Often with the easements, it's about it's not always about necessarily the interior as much as it is about the exterior. And people will want to preserve them for what- for a variety of reasons. They might know the history of the site and know that it has some historic significance. They might if they're already in a historic district, there's probably already some kind of regulations around what they can and can't do to the exterior of their house, but an easement might add an extra layer of protection. So yeah, people will do it... it might just be that someone lives in an older building, and it's personally significant to them, and they wanna make sure it's maintained over time. So yeah, there's a variety of reasons why people might do it, and there's different approaches. And I should also say it can vary somewhat by state,

Abigail 16:04

So it's interesting to me because, we've got these historic preservation organizations, and in some way they've always been eco-minded just by their very nature of, trying to preserve something. But it does seem by, for example, creating a director of sustainability that the language and the purpose is shifting a little bit almost to demonstrate the ecological and climate action or benefit or opportunity with these historic houses. Is that true? And can you talk a little bit about that?

Joie 16:40

Sure. I think for a lot of historic preservation organizations, I think they came to wanting to work on these issues for a variety of reasons. One is they want to be good- Community members in whatever community they're in and do their part to help make sure that the community that they're in is resilient. There's also wanting to be a good example in terms of reducing emissions and things like that. And then also, I think a lot of organizations, much like you just alluded to, were doing this work in some way, but it wasn't necessarily under a particular umbrella or maybe without a plan. So I can give, for example, with Historic New England we... Our climate work really, it started in resilience because we were noticing and I'll give an example in Maine and I'm, I don't 100% remember when this was done, i- in part because it was done before I arrived. But we received a grant a number of years ago to look at the gutter capacity of our buildings in Maine, of our sites in Maine. And that doesn't sound very exciting on the surface, you're like, "Yay, gutters." But we had noticed that they were overflowing and it was creating issues because the water was not being guided away from the buildings. And when we first started to look at it, we really thought that it was going to be a gutter capacity issue, and it actually turned out it wasn't so much the gutters as much as it was the downspouts, which were only about an inch in diameter and designed for a time when we received a whole lot less rain. And so-

Abigail 18:20

have these crazy rainfalls now that

Joie 18:23

Exactly. And so it couldn't keep up. And so what we ended up doing is, once the study was complete and we realized this, we upgraded some of the gutters, which was done in a variety of ways 'cause the gutters were all very different. Some of our buildings still have wooden gutters, and those have to be made, by hand. There's not a wooden gutter shop you can go and buy them. And we increased the size of the downspout, and it made a huge difference. There's... And it was so significant, in fact, we actually... There's a white paper on our website about it so that other people can reference it and look at what they can do with their their houses. So resiliency played a big role in it. So we have sites like I said, across five New England states: Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island. And in Massachusetts, we have a building in Boston called the Otis House that is subject to a program called... Because of its size, because it's right at 20,000 square feet is subject to a program in Boston called BERDO, which stands for Building Emissions Reporting and Disclosure Ordinance, or maybe it's Building Emissions Reduction and Disclosure Ordinance. And that requires buildings over 20,000 square feet in the Greater Boston area to start reporting, not only reporting their emissions every year, but also and their energy usage, but also to start meeting certain emissions guidelines or start to face what they, will ha- you'll have to pay what's called an alternative compliance payment. And Historic New England, at the same time that was happening, a second program started in the Boston area called, that was put on by the Boston Green Ribbon Commission which was a collaborative climate action planning process, which brought together organizations that wanted to be doing this work but didn't really have a place to start. And this was a low-cost option, and you went through it with organizations that were somewhat similar to you so that if questions came up, you could, you might be tackling similar problems together. And it was in the midst of this that the decision was made, okay, if we're going to do this work, it shouldn't just apply to Otis House. We should be applying this across all of our sites. And two, if we're going to do that, this is much bigger than... This is a bigger project than can just be attached to somebody else's job, right? Let's have facilities take care of it or have property care manage it. And so that's how they, the sustainability position came about, but it also is how our own climate action plan became consolidated into an actual plan, and not just these piecemeal, "Okay, let's reduce energy here. Oh, this building is under threat because of sea level rise. This building's impacted by too much rain." It, we, and we ended up adopting our climate commitment statement and our four climate action goals. There-

Abigail 21:22

what are those

Joie 21:23

Oh, sure. I'm going to summarize them. But there's basically, there's four. There is a mitigation goal, which is reducing our emissions, and our goal is to reach net zero by 2050 there's a resilience goal, which is working to preserve our sites, make them more resilient, while also preserving the integrity of the building and realize, recognizing that we have to adapt, right? And there is a climate justice goal, which is recognizing that any actions we take are not limited to our, the boundaries of our site. We exist within communities and,

Abigail 22:09

Yeah.

Joie 22:10

And we want to make sure that any work that we do is done in an equitable way and takes those commun- whatever communities we're in, into account. And then there's one that I call an integration goal, which is basically integrating sustainability into our day-to-day work. And sometimes that, that means Or a big part of that means, empowering staff to be able to make more sustainable decisions.

Abigail 22:35

Can you give me an example of something that's more su-- like a better, a sustainable decision?

Joie 22:41

When we... So we have done, so we have our broader climate action goals, but we've also done some site-specific climate action planning because with, sites spread out so far, every site faces its own issues, right? And every site uses a different level of energy. But our first site that we did a big site-focused climate action plan for was Casey Farm down in Rhode Island, and that was chosen for a couple of reasons. It's our most heavily visited site. It gets about 40,000 visitors a year. It's not just a historic site, it's also a working organic farm. It is bounded by a river on one side and the ocean on the other. And and it has about 300 acres of land. So we thought it's probably also one of our most complex sites. So if we were going to run into issues, we'd probably run into it there. So it was a good first example. And one of the things that came out of that was that staff needed to be able to make more sustainable purchasing decisions. And we thought it makes no sense to just design a purchasing plan for Casey Farm. We should come up with one for the organization as a whole. And so we actually have a group called the Climate Action Staff Advisory Group. We call it CASAG for short. And that has members from all of the teams across the organization. So there's folks from property care, there's folks from visitor services, there's folks from membership. There are people from IT, so it's across the organization. And we have spent the past year actually designing a sustainable purchasing document that can serve as a guideline for staff to be able to make those more sustainable decisions. It's still in the sort of final draft phase. Our next step is to bring it to business services and eventually to get approved by our board. I should probably say a little bit of what it includes. It includes things like a series of questions that people can ask about where to buy something. So if I'm going to go buy... Of course, I'm gonna, I'm gonna try and think of an example now. We'll say if I'm going to buy some lumber to repair a place, it w- like the first question is there a locally owned lumberyard that I can purchase from, right? Because that's not only, it's closer, it's also keeping more money in the local economy. If not, is there a place that... I- is there a brick-and-mortar store that may be a chain that is close by that I can get it from, rather than, say, ordering it to have, from someplace further away and then it's shipped. There's also things about content and, thinking about end of life and such when you buy something, so you know, what's going to happen to this item when it's not useful anymore? And then there's also some general purchasing questions like, is there somebody else in the organization that already has X object that I want to use? And if I only need to use it once, does it make sense for us to buy a new one or just use that one, right? Yeah. And a lot of

Abigail 25:41

are all questions we should all be asking ourselves.

Joie 25:44

100%, 100%. 'Cause the other, one of the other questions is there a place we can rent this item, right? And I think of a lot of the places in Maine that are starting things like tool libraries where, not everybody needs to go out and buy a table saw, right? Or a chainsaw or even a mower, if there's a place you can go and borrow it or rent it for a day and then bring it back and somebody else can, then yeah, you have multiple people using one mower or one table saw or one hedge trimmer or whatever, as opposed to everybody owning one.

Abigail 26:19

And then someone's there to fix it

Joie 26:21

Exactly. Exactly.

Abigail 26:23

in your basement.

Joie 26:24

Yep.

Abigail 26:25

I'm curious also about the experience. So with this focus on the climate and sustainability how is this communicated and how is this appreciated by people who come to experience a Historic New England site?

Joie 26:42

Sure. I actually have I have quite a few examples about this, but I think there's two ways. There is actually intentionally going out and talking about climate action and the work that we're doing, and then there's also the stories we tell at sites, right? And which I alluded to earlier. It's very easy in a lot of ways to incorporate climate into tours and into the landscape when you're talking about it and such. And that's also not always necessarily just about the past. For instance at the sites that we are looking to install heat pumps at, our plan in a lot of cases is to, 'cause you're gonna think a heat pump's gonna look... That mini split outside is going to look out of place at a historic- Yeah site. Although, in most cases, we're finding a way to disguise it, whether that's building a fence around it- Yeah or just putting it someplace where it's not visible from the street. You can also make that part of the visitor experience, right? You can say, "In order to help continue to preserve these sites and to help them last longer and to be a m- better community member, look at this thing that we've done," right? And in some cases, excuse me, like at Casey Farm where you think about farmers and how independent they've been historically, right? And you can ask the question if something like solar panels or heat pumps had been available to a farmer back then, would they have done it? And the answer is, yeah, most likely because- Yeah it would've allowed them to continue to have that independence. And we've actually found too, at in at least one of our sites, the Eustis Estate there actually used to be a wind turbine on that site. Yeah. It was built in the late 1800s that powered the house. Now granted, you could only do this if you were wealthy. But the house, the location, while electricity was often being installed in urban areas, the lines didn't reach out to these larger c- country estates. And so people looked at doing things like getting wind turbines to actually power their house, and even batteries to be able to hold the power to be used at a later time. Yeah. Which is fascinating. Looking at the Eustis Estate, would it be possible to do a modern- some kind of turbine or solar panels or something that speaks to that usage, right? In terms of our more direct work I've done a lot of presenting and talking about the work. We actually have a dedicated page to climate action on our website. And in all of my experience there's only been once, and it was in response to a survey, that anybody gave any sort of pushback or negative response, and it was just a comment on a survey I think we did when we were doing a climate action plan for, I think, Pierce House, but I'm not 100% sure. And we w- had done a survey of like members or community members, and somebody made a comment, "Why don't you just stick to historic preservation?" And that is the most negative thing I have heard in doing this work. In fact, it's usually quite the opposite. We've been doing a lot of resilience work at our site, Sayward Wheeler, on the York River, which is at a spot where the river and the tide intersect right down in York near the Wiggly Bridge, and so it floods very regularly. And it was one of our sites that was on a top list to start doing some resilience work and resilience planning to be able to protect it from sea level rise. And we received a grant from the main historic preservation commission to look at resilience and flooding at the site. And as part of our outreach, we... And stakeholder engagement, we did a community day at the site, and it was... We had a bunch of stuff going on. There were guides there to do mini tours for free. We had our preservation carpenters there because we were in the process of redoing the porch because water kept pooling on the porch and caused it to rot out, which was something that wasn't an issue in the past because rain was not as frequent or as much. And then we were also there to talk about our sustainability planning. And so I arrived very early to set up flags along the shoreline that marked out the different flood levels. And even before we had signs up that indicated what the different lines were, and they were the daylight flooding line, the the old FEMA 1% flood risk, the... Where the 2024 storm came, Yeah and then the updated 2022 FEMA 1% flood risk. And each row was a different color, and people immediately knew what it was about. And so I'm there, like- Knee crawling with my little contour line tool to mark out the flags. I'm, wet from the dew, and people are coming up to me and sharing their flood stories, right? Even before we were set up for the day. That only increased- Nice once we were set up, once we actually had a table, and, that people could come and talk with me. I had... I was there to talk about our sustainability work, but I spent probably about half my time just listening to people talk about their flood experiences, people who experienced Katrina, people who experienced Sandy in New York. For people who might be listening who, who don't know, York is a big tourist town in Southern Maine, so you get people from all over the place. There were people who had experi- who'd been through what happened in Asheville. And people, one, recognized what we were doing, understood why we were doing it, and there was also a very human part to it because it also empowered people to talk about their own experience or it gave them a space to. And people don't people don't like to talk about climate change in part because they think nobody else believes in it. There's a great project called the... It used to be called the Yale Six Americas, but it's broader than that. It's the Yale climate communication studies that they've done that show about, almost 70% of the population believes in climate change, this is in the US and wants to do something about it, but only about 30% of those people actually talk about it with people in their lives on a day-to-day basis. And we can't do anything about what we don't talk about. But the main reason people don't talk about it is they assume other people don't care. And so- I think when you are willing to talk about it, at least in my experience has been that, that people are very supportive. They like to see that we're doing this work. In some cases they see... they have a personal in terms of a specific site, they have a personal attachment to that site, and they want to see it be around, so they're supportive. But I think in general, when people have an opportunity to actually be able to talk about it, to express their fears, to express their experience, and they see that other people are doing that work whether it's a historic preservation organization or it's some other institution in their town it's a very positive experience. And a lot of times people- Yeah walk away saying that they feel like they can go do something now because they're seeing somebody else doing something,

Abigail 34:40

yeah.

Joie 34:41

Yeah.

Abigail 34:43

I think it keeps these historic places relevant to have this discussion. You don't want to turn into an anachronism, some relic, and by having these discussions, it seems to me, you're relating to the future and to the present.

Joie 35:02

Yeah one of our sites down in Boston, Pierce House, we actually have a lot of journals from from the Pierce family, and they note in a lot of them what the weather was. And so we do a lot of work with students there, our site director does. And they can reference those old journals, right? And say "This is what Pierce experienced. What are you experiencing now?" So you're literally using the past as a way to have a conversation about things that are happening right now.

Abigail 35:34

Amazing. So what brought you to this mission? How did you get started in sustainability and historic preservation? Which came first?

Joie 35:44

The sustainability part. I I've always been an environmentalist. I was brought up in a family that was very concerned about the environment and also wasn't afraid to talk about big issues, at the dinner table, so it was sometimes a topic of discussion. My father was a civil engineer and did a lot of landfill inspections and things someti- some of which I tagged along to in the, this was the '80s. They would probably never allow somebody to bring their kid on a landfill inspection these days. But but it wa- you know, it was done occasionally then. And I just remember seeing the massive amount of waste and being like, just thinking about the impacts of that. And then also, I grew up at a time just not too long after the Clean Air and the Clean Water Acts were passed, and actually living through being able to see what a powerful impact those both had on the environment. Rivers were literally catching on fire at one time in the, in this country

Abigail 36:39

We wouldn't have oysters if we didn't have the Clean Water

Joie 36:41

Right. Exactly. And so I always... and I loved being in nature. Nature's always been my refuge in difficult times. But I didn't actually go to school for sustainability until I was in my late 30s. I went back to school when I was 38. I graduated in 2016 with a degree in- sustainable business and environmental sustainability. And for about six years I worked for a consultant where an environmental consultant. We did a lot of work around the social and economic impacts of sea level rise and climate change. At the same time, history has always been something also that I was interested in. I don't think my parents ever passed a historic marker that they didn't like. We stopped at a lot of them. I spent part of my childhood in New Hampshire, and you think of those green signs that are everywhere, and I think if we saw one, it- we had to turn around and stop. And I also I used to volunteer at the Eastern Cemetery in Portland before I moved to Biddeford as a guide, and I went through the Portland History Docents program, which I highly recommend. I'll put a little plug in there for that 'cause I think they're about to start their next round of training folks. And I design my own tours walking tours some of which have been climate-focused. But I also have a love of folklore I do a lot around local folklore and what's the actual original story behind that folklore. And so I had a dual background in in sust- the sustainability part was the more formal education. The historic part was a little more personal training things I learned over time. And when the consultant I worked for was working for decided to scale things back, 'cause it was a very small firm I, found myself looking for another position. And I saw the the- this position advertised for Historic New England. The position had actually been up for a while, and I thought, "There's no way this job is filled yet," but I applied anyway. And ended up coming to to work for Historic New England. I have been learning more and more about the ins and outs of historic preservation. And I've, so my sustainability background came first, but so yeah, and now I'm learning much more. I've learned so much in the three years that I've been at Historic New England. And I think, as we've touched on a couple times in our conversation already, I think there's so much that can be done when you bring together history and climate change because you're giving people a way, an easy way to talk about a very difficult subject.

Abigail 39:14

Before I ask you the question that I ask every guest on this podcast is there anything that I haven't asked today that you'd like to talk about?

Joie 39:25

Oh, goodness. I could talk about this subject for a very long time I, it's not so much something that we didn't talk about as much as I, I like to, actually, I'll say two things. One, climate change is something we need to talk about, and the more we talk about it, the more we're- likely we are to actually do something about it. And that's not just m- that's not just me saying talk about this because it's important. Statist- you know, studies show that people base their own actions on what the people around them are doing. There's a great study about solar panels that showed the biggest driving factor of whether somebody got- gets solar panels is whether their neighbors have them, right? It, I'd say that. The other thing is that if you're walking around your particular town start to notice the buildings that are around you. And think about some of these buildings have been around a long time, and their purpose has changed a lot over time. You have even the building I'm in, it used to be I call it it was a very fancy duplex. It was, it, basically two townhouse style structures that were built. There was a father on one side, son on the other, 'cause I, I have to research every place I live. It's compulsive. Now it's eight apartments. Every building changes over time and there's a lot, there's always a story. There's always a story, and often that story includes climate, right? So-

Abigail 40:52

With all that you're doing in this world of sustainability and all that you've seen and all the people that you've talked to along this journey, which I think might be the biggest barometer, are you optimistic about our planet and our ability to stay ahead or be prepared for climate change?

Joie 41:12

Mostly, yes. And the reason I say that is there's more and more action being taken at the local level, and I think that's what really drives change, right? Things like the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, those a- are wonderful and amazing, and it went so incredibly far to clean up our air and our water. But neither of them would have happened if people hadn't started taking steps in their own communities, if people hadn't started caring about the pollution that was happening in their own communities. And while I think, and this is why I say mostly while I think that in a lot of cases we are getting started later than I would personally have liked, and a lot of that has to do with increased storms and things, people are finally recognizing that there is a real risk here, or... Actually, I shouldn't say recognize. I think a lot of people recognize it, but I think at the same time it seemed abstract, right? Because they hadn't experienced it themselves yet. While we are s- getting started much later than I think we should have to prevent to prevent most things from happening, I think we still have a great opportunity to prevent the worst from happening. And people are realizing that, and they're starting to do something about it. And, real, lasting, deep change takes place at the personal and the community level first. It's a- it's never top-down. It's always from the ground up because... And that's how the broader cultural change happens, too, right? Not just with climate change, but with any change. It all starts with us,

Abigail 42:58

Thank you so much. And thank you for reaching out, and for coming on the podcast today. This was just really fascinating, and I'm delighted that you're with Historic New England and bringing this this sustainability aspect to what they do. It's a great organization and and I'm honored to have you on.

Joie 43:15

Thank you. I'm really grateful for the opportunity and yeah I'm, I will be very interested if you get... what kind of response it gets, so thank you. And I've actually listened to a couple of episodes and really, I've really enjoyed them. So I think what you're

Abigail 43:28

Oh, thank

Joie 43:29

you're doing is great too. You're making you're making this very personal, right? With a lot of the guests that you've had on. Yeah. And I think that's important,

Abigail 43:38

hold on. I'm just gonna s-