Continuity, Not Rupture: Temporal Orientation and Climate Change in New Orleans

Nicole Letourneau, Harvard University

This paper examines how cultural-temporal orientations shape how actors interpret and respond to climate change. Drawing on 90 semi-structured interviews with civic, nonprofit, and philanthropic actors in Greater New Orleans, I show that many residents do not frame climate change as an unprecedented rupture, but as a continuation of a long-standing history of environmental instability. Interviewees frequently describe contemporary climate threats as “more of the same,” situating them within narratives of endurance, adaptation, and survival that extend across generations. Rather than producing fatalism, this orientation often underwrites a form of cautious optimism grounded in narratives of endurance and adaptation. Actors evaluate the city’s future not primarily through abstract, long-term projections of climate risk, but through historically informed assessments of its capacity to persist. By contrast, individuals less embedded in the city’s historical narratives are more likely to interpret climate change as a novel and escalating threat, producing more pessimistic expectations about the city’s viability. These findings contribute to scholarship on temporality and action by demonstrating how orientations to the past shape expectations of the future in contexts of uncertainty. While existing research has emphasized future-oriented cognition in motivating action, this paper shows that past-oriented frameworks can also structure projections and sustain commitment, even under conditions of acute risk. More broadly, the paper complicates accounts of climate perception that assume increasing exposure to risk produces heightened concern. Instead, it highlights how culturally embedded temporal frameworks mediate the relationship between environmental change and social response, shaping not only how risk is perceived, but how futures are imagined and acted upon.

No extended abstract or paper available

 Presented in Session 79. Comparative-Historical Environmental Sociology Part One: Empirics and Theory