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Hurricane Sandy Manhattan New York City climate change
A power outage in Manhattan during Hurricane Sandy. (Photo: Lisa Bettany {Mostly Lisa}/Flick)

My ‘国产吃瓜黑料’ Moment of the Year: The City and Hurricane Sandy

In a place built on selective ignorance, a storm forced everyone to stop and think

Published: 
Hurricane Sandy Manhattan New York City climate change
(Photo: Lisa Bettany {Mostly Lisa}/Flick)

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We asked our fellow staffers for their favorite聽国产吃瓜黑料聽moments of the year, and we want to hear yours, too. In the comments, tell us what moved you, what mattered to you, and what moment stood out most.

New York City prides itself on being indomitable. Its residents often feel impervious to the natural world. There are umbrella men on the avenues for rain, and snowstorms are inconveniences that make you late for lunch but give car owners a reprieve from street cleaning rules. For a week, Hurricane Sandy put a stop to that chosen naivete, flooding subways, burning homes, knocking down cranes, turning out the lights and otherwise forcing the busiest city on earth to submit to nature. By literally thrusting the hard fact of our altered environment into the streets, the storm did what many activists and scientists couldn’t: reinsert climate change into the public conversation, with . The city has since resumed its fast churn鈥攊t always does鈥攂ut the images of the dark skyline and the whitecaps in the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel and the burned shells of houses in Breezy Point endure.聽It remains to be seen whether the newfound understanding of the city’s frailty will.

Lead Photo: Lisa Bettany {Mostly Lisa}/Flick

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