The impact of climate change on America’s historic resources and communities is vast and complex. Climate change is not merely a physical threat to our cultural heritage; it also challenges our understanding of what it means to “save” a place—indeed, it challenges our notions of permanence itself.

The preservation movement has long touted the notion that historic preservation is the “ultimate recycling,” and rightfully so. Most of us are familiar with the poster celebrating National Preservation Week in 1980 of a historic building in the shape of a gas can illustrating in simple graphic terms that re-using an existing building saves energy. Borrowing from that message, we need to face the challenge of climate impacts head on. Now is the time to be persistent—by bringing old buildings into the future to demonstrate their compatibility with adaptability and flexibility-based frameworks.

Addressing the impacts that climate change and sea level rise will bring requires both policy makers and the preservation community to be flexible and willing to consider nontraditional solutions, such as moving buildings, raising them, or using newer, experimental approaches and building materials. To protect the old, we must embrace the new in the face of forces bigger than ourselves.

Read more about how two of our National Treasures are experiencing the damaging effects of climate change, and how the National Trust and its partners are working on solutions that can provide lessons for other historic places, too.