New York’s governor and Democratic supermajority can’t seem to agree on taxing the rich a little bit more to help deal with climate change. In 2021, when Hurricane Ida hit the city and the streets flooded like they did on Friday, 16 people, inordinately low-income and immigrant New Yorkers, died from drowning in their basement apartments—yet the powers that be can’t even pass rules that would stop people from dying when their illegally converted basement units flood. It took years of organizing just to pass a bill allowing the state’s public power authority to build renewables. Adams is actively trying to let landlords off the hook for reducing building emissions. All the while, he’s turned the increase of migration into the city into a Trumpian spectacle, blaming the 5 percent cut he wants to impose on city agencies on people who are, in some cases, fleeing the effects of climate change.
Adams’s priorities don’t seem all that different from those of the national GOP, which is now poised to trigger a painful government shutdown over immigration. While Adams is likely to demand some modest cuts from the NYPD, House Republicans are now demanding Congress slash domestic programs by 30 percent, exempting the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Defense, and the Veterans Administration. Another proposal would nix international disaster aid. Eric Adams’s New York City, that is, may well start looking a lot like the rest of the United States as temperatures rise: increasingly armed, underwater, and hostile to newcomers.
Short of voting out the politicians responsible for that miserable state of affairs, it may be worth considering a short-term solution. If hordes of cops are going to keep polluting New York’s flood-prone subways, the least they could do is grab a bucket and be helpful for once.