ABSTRACT

How did New York City’s climate politics change after Hurricane Sandy, and why? Prevailing accounts of extreme weather’s impact on climate politics draw on survey data and characterize climate policy in vague terms. However, weather does not do the work of politics; the specifics of climate policy matter. I develop a relational sociological approach focused on mobilized actors, political economy, and event theory. Drawing on interviews and document analysis, I show how senior disaster officials, New York’s Mayor Bloomberg and his Office of Long-Term Planning and Sustainability, community groups and Occupy Sandy activists responded to Hurricane Sandy. Actors maintained outlooks and practices consistent with their position in the city’s power relations. This selective continuity shifted New York’s climate policy from decarbonization-focused tentative cosmopolitanism to adaptation-focused defensive parochialism. I term this convergent prioritization of adaptation a ‘fortress of solitude’ social logic. Only subsequent events explain New York’s 2019 low-carbon legislation.

摘要

飓风桑迪过后，纽约市的气候政治发生了怎样的变化，为什么？关于极端天气对气候政治影响的流行说法利用了调查数据并模糊地描述了气候政策。然而，天气并不影响政治；气候政策的细节很重要。我开发了一种关系社会学方法，专注于动员的行动者、政治经济学和事件理论。通过访谈和文件分析，我展示了高级灾难官员、纽约市长布隆伯格及其长期规划和可持续发展办公室、社区团体和占领桑迪活动家如何应对飓风桑迪。行动者保持与他们在城市权力关系中的地位一致的观点和做法。这种选择性的连续性将纽约的气候政策从以脱碳为重点的试探性世界主义转变为以适应为重点的防御性狭隘主义。我将这种融合的适应优先级称为“孤独堡垒”的社会逻辑。只有随后的事件才能解释纽约 2019 年的低碳立法。