[ If hordes of cops are going to keep polluting New York’s
increasingly flood-prone subways, the least they could do is grab a
bucket and be helpful.]
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NYC IS TOTALLY UNPREPARED FOR CLIMATE DISASTER  
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Kate Aronoff
September 29, 2023
The New Republic
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_ If hordes of cops are going to keep polluting New York’s
increasingly flood-prone subways, the least they could do is grab a
bucket and be helpful. _

Rain leaks from the ceiling in front of a train before it is taken
out of service at a subway station during a rainstorm in Brooklyn on
September 29. , Michael Nagle/Bloomberg/Getty Images

 

New Yorkers trying to get on the subway today faced water streaming
out of station walls
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ceilings, water up to their hips, and flooded, electrified tracks
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The Metropolitan Transit Authority urged riders not to take the train
as parents figure out how to get their children home from schools
facing similarly dire conditions
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New York City Mayor Eric Adams was nowhere to be seen Friday morning,
as the possibly one-in-100-year storm struck. Adams’ office
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silence [[link removed]]
by saying it had put out a press release just after 11 p.m. last
night; Adams eventually gave a virtual press briefing
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after it was scheduled to begin. (Adams spent the night before the
floods at a fundraiser where attendees were encouraged to give
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more than $2,000.)

As climate change turns flooding into a more regular, deadly problem
for the five boroughs, Adams has seemed more concerned during the
first months of his administration about inundating the subway with
cops, whose main purpose seems to be the implicit threat of physical
violence. There are 2,500 NYPD
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officers deployed in the transit system and an additional 1,000
dispatched there daily. That’s in addition to around 1,100 MTA cops
and NYPD officers helping to spend down city resources with excessive
overtime
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In Times Square, they’ll now be joined by a 400 pound robot cop
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named K5, leased out from private surveillance company Knighscope for
$9 an hour. For reference, as _Hell Gate_ pointed out
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just 1,200 officers patrolled the system in 1991, when there were
nearly three times as many murders underground and about nine times as
many felonies.

On a typical day in New York, packs of cops will stand around on
subway platforms chatting or looking at their phones, or hanging
around in groups writing expensive tickets for turnstile-jumpers
looking to evade the newly increased subway fare. This spring, the
city agreed to a nearly 30 percent retroactive pay increase for NYPD
officers that will cost $5.5 billion
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through 2027. Meanwhile, rats scurry by and some mysterious black
sludge oozes out of the walls—maybe from the same holes that
floodwaters shot out of today. (About half of the entire subway
system, one of the most extensive in the world, was suspended during
the flooding, officials said
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The MTA itself, it’s worth noting, is controlled by the state of New
York, not the city. Former Governor Andrew Cuomo famously starved it
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of cash while funneling money toward the highway system (and even on
unrelated projects like bailing out the state’s ski resorts,
suffering from snow-sparse winters thanks to climate change). Rather
than perform routine maintenance on the whole system, Cuomo
prioritized flashy projects like building up the Second Avenue subway,
which catered to wealthier Upper East Side residents. Under Kathy
Hochul, the MTA is still underfunded
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by millions of dollars each year.

The upshot is that New York City—America’s biggest and arguably
most social democratic city—is manifestly unprepared for what
climate change has in store for it. The problems it faces from rising
temperatures aren’t so unique, but it should theoretically be easier
to deal with those problems in a place where Democrats who talk
constantly about their commitment to “climate action,” or some
such, control just about every relevant elected office. Not so!

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
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that would stop people from dying when their illegally converted
basement units flood
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It took years of organizing
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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
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for reducing building emissions. All the while, he’s turned
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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
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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
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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
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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.

Kate Aronoff is a staff writer at _The New Republic._

_The New Republic_ has been a leader in defending American democracy
for more than a century. Rest assured we will be relentless in
standing against Trump’s onslaught on democracy in our coverage over
the course of this campaign.
 
And we’re kicking it all off with an exciting event: the “Stop
Trump Summit,” which will be held in New York City on October 11.
The summit will gather some of the top minds fighting against a second
Trump presidency—including the person who may understand him better
than anyone else, psychologist Mary L. Trump; congressman and
constitutional law expert Jamie Raskin; National Action Network
founder Al Sharpton; lawyer and CNN contributor George Conway; Lincoln
Project media maestro Stuart Stevens; and actor Robert De Niro.

* New York City
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* Climate Change
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