Artist uses ‘historic’ markers to raise climate awareness
DURHAM, New Hampshire—New England is awash in historic markers, but a handful of plaques popping up in a New Hampshire town are different.
Rather than commemorating important people or places in history, many of these dinner platesize signs detail events like rising sea levels and an explosion of ticks that have yet to happen—part of an effort to draw attention to the potential effects of climate change.
The signs are based on possibilities laid out in the scientific research that the towns have used to develop their climate plans and written from the perspective of someone in the 22nd century looking back.
“The concept is to just really take that information that is on the websites and package it in a way to insert it into the landscape where people will bump into it,” said Northeastern University’s Thomas Starr, who came up with the project known as ”Remembrance of Climate Futures.” He has placed 11 plaques in Durham, New Hampshire, six in Essex, Massachusetts and is planning to install some in Cambridge, Massachusetts, as well.
“There seems to be difficulty in getting people to engage in this issue,” he said. “We do hear about it fairly often. Yet, people don’t think of it in an immediate way.”
The markers imagine events like a boathouse destroyed in a storm surge from a Category 4 hurricane on Sept. 24, 2032, or a heat-inspired tick outbreak that forced a park to close on June 8, 2044.
Other markers are more hopeful, imagining commemorating how Durham switched to 100 percent renewable energy on July 20, 2040, or planted elm trees in May 2026 to reduce the urban heat effect.
It is unclear what impact, if any, the signs are having. Durham is home to the University of New Hampshire, and interest in climate change is generally stronger in college towns. Eventually, Starr hopes to bring his project to more conservative communities where skepticism might be higher like towns in the Midwest that experienced destructive floods this spring. /