Climate + Environment
Climate change and environmental crisis directly impacts our community and the lives of millions around the world.
As part of our Climate + Environment initiative, PEM is hosting special exhibitions and programs about our changing relationship to the natural world to spark conversation, motivate action and inspire creative solutions. We are also taking action to be a more environmentally sustainable and climate-forward institution, including partnering on related efforts in the community and beyond.
What we’ve done
- PEM was awarded the inaugural Mass Save Climate Leader® Award for energy efficiency in October 2022.
- PEM’s current efforts to reduce CO2 emissions will have the equivalent of recharging nearly 1 billion smartphones.
- We partner with the city and local organizations for the annual Preservation in a Changing Climate Conference. PEM hosted the 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024 and 2025 conferences. The 2026 conference will take place on September 23.
- The Climate + Environment Ideators (founded in 2021) are museum-wide staff group that meets regularly to share information, discuss new opportunities and propose ideas to help make PEM a more sustainable and climate-forward institution.
- We collaborate with Mass Audubon’s Youth Climate Leaders Program, working together to launch the North Shore branch in 2022. Youth from across the North Shore meet at PEM biweekly to learn, connect and serve the community by hosting climate summits, participating in climate advocacy and organizing service projects.
- The Museum Shop works with vendors who prioritize sustainable practices in their products.
- We purchased a reusable exhibition platform system in 2022 to minimize waste generated by changing exhibitions.
- PEM was designated a Level 2 Arboretum in 2024 by the global ArbNet Arboretum Accreditation Program and the Morton Register of Arboreta. PEM properties cover more than nine acres of gardens and green spaces!
- The museum is saving nearly 800,000 gallons of water annually through recent improvements made to lawn and garden irrigation systems, including adding rain sensors.
- Launched a composting system in 2025 to convert food waste into soil enrichment.
- A UMass Amherst native bee expert concluded PEM’s historic Ropes Mansion Garden has a wide and varied bee population, which illustrates a healthy example of how people and pollinators can co-exist and aid one another.
- During annual “Cut Down Day” at Ropes Mansion, which prepares the garden for winter, PEM’s Horticulture and Grounds team harvested milkweed seeds and sent packages to the Save Our Monarchs and the Monarch Watch foundations, which help endangered monarch butterflies.
There’s lots more to come
We hope you’ll join us as we learn together, exploring topics like preserving biodiversity, environmental justice, coastal vulnerability and more. Check back here for upcoming climate-focused events, guest speakers and exhibitions.
Follow along on social media using #PEMClimate
Related exhibitions
Cultivating Hope, Healing and Courage with Jane Goodall
Artist Conversation
Artist Silvia López Chavez discusses her artwork, Undercurrent.
Climate + Environment Talk
Pulitzer Prize-winning science journalist Elizabeth Kolbert highlights key issues in the climate crisis and reads from her latest book, Under a White Sky. Then listen to a conversation with Kolbert, New Yorker artist Edward Koren and photographer Stephen Gorman.
Climate + Environment Talk
Brazilian field ecologist Dr. Marcia Macedo is committed to finding science-based solutions to complex challenges facing the Amazon rainforest. Dr. Macedo shares her unique view of the Amazon and speaks to important climate-forest interactions in the region. She is joined by soundscape ecologist Bernie Krause to explore the intersection of her research and Dr. Krause's sound recordings captured in the heart of the Amazon.
Keep exploring
