New York City as 'fortress of solitude' after Hurricane Sandy: a relational sociology of extreme weather's relationship to climate politics

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.