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      Eric Adams, N.Y.C.'s Likely Next Mayor, Expresses Shock at Ida Damage

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      Currently serving his last months as Brooklyn borough president, Mr. Adams called the city’s devastation “a wake-up call” on climate change and spoke about the need for “new solutions.”Eric Adams, who as the Democratic nominee is the likely next mayor of New York City, expressed alarm over the devastation he saw in hard-struck areas from the remnants of Hurricane Ida. In television interviews late on Wednesday and on Thursday, he described his shock. Mr. Adams said he had witnessed flooding in Brooklyn that he hadn’t seen before, including flooding on a ramp to the Brooklyn Bridge.“I had to assist some of the motorists,” Mr. Adams said. He called on New Yorkers to help their neighbors and said, “It’s real that global warming is here.”Mr. Adams said that he normally expects flooding in coastal parts of Brooklyn, like Coney Island, but that he was getting reports of inundations in many other neighborhoods as well.“I have never witnessed something like this,” Mr. Adams said.On Twitter, he offered condolences to New Yorkers whose family members had died in the flooding.At one point in his televised appearances, Mr. Adams stressed that the devastation was “a real wake-up call to all of us how we must understand how this climate change is impacting us.” He spoke briefly about the need for improved infrastructure and “new solutions” and the need to “think differently” about how to respond to climate change.But his environmental platform has not been a focal point of his mayoral campaign. The Democratic primary he won was largely focused on how to deal with rising crime.Mr. Adams did release a plan on Earth Day to combat climate change by upgrading the electric grid to renewable energy and focusing on wind and solar projects that would help create jobs and help low income communities most affected by climate change.“Eric has called for significant changes to how we approach resiliency — including a comprehensive citywide process to determine where we need to invest in coordination with our state and federal partners and metrics for tracking the number of people at risk of injury from a flood,” said Evan Thies, a spokesman for Mr. Adams.The near-certitude that he will be New York’s next mayor was evident. Just before midnight, Don Lemon, a CNN host, welcomed Mr. Adams as the mayor-elect before quickly correcting himself.“Excuse me. Mayor nominee,” Mr. Lemon said. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.”During a CNN appearance on Thursday, Mr. Adams was asked what people should do if they were trapped in the subway. Mr. Adams, a former transit police officer, told people to wait for help from emergency officials.His spokesman, Mr. Thies, said that Mr. Adams was speaking from his personal experience.“Eric’s a first responder, first and foremost,” he said. “In crises, he uses his training as a public safety officer, his resources as borough president, and his knowledge as a lifetime New Yorker to make sure people are getting the help they need and government is responding in real time.”Before the storm, Mr. Adams was scheduled to appear with Gov. Kathy C. Hochul in Brooklyn but the event was canceled as the governor planned a news conference with Mr. de Blasio.Mr. Adams appeared at the news conference with the governor and the mayor, but did not speak. More

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      German Candidates Fail to Find Footing in Flood Response

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      So far, none of the main contenders to replace Angela Merkel have come across as strong leaders in the aftermath of floods that killed 170 people and caused billions in damages.BERLIN — Floods have had a way of reshaping German politics.Helmut Schmidt made a name for himself responding to deadly floods in Hamburg in 1962, and went on to become chancellor in the 1970s. Images of Gerhard Schröder wading through muddy water along the Elbe River in 2002 are credited with helping him win another term.The floods that ravaged Germany last week — more severe than any in centuries — are already doing their work in this election year. But the striking thing they have revealed, political analysts say, is that none of the major candidates has been able to demonstrate the level of leadership in a crisis the public has grown accustomed to under Chancellor Angela Merkel.While the deadly flash floods have offered the candidates a chance to show their stuff, political experts said that each has struggled to communicate competence and reassurance. Voters seem to agree.The first poll since the flooding showed a drop in popularity for the two leading candidates — the conservative Armin Laschet and his Green party rival, Annalena Baerbock — after what political experts say have been lackluster performances by both this week.“This will not be an election in which the candidates play a deciding role,” said Uwe Jun, a professor of political science at the University of Trier. “None of the candidates have the kind of overwhelming charisma that is able to fully convince voters.”The floods have killed 170 people, with more than 150 still unaccounted for, the police said on Wednesday. The number of missing is significantly lower than figures announced last week, when downed communication networks and blocked roads rendered many people unreachable.In the latest polling, which was carried out from Tuesday to Sunday, Mr. Laschet’s leading Christian Democratic Union dipped below 30 percent support, to 28 percent, while their main rivals, the second-place Greens, held steady at 19 percent.When asked if they could vote for an individual candidate (Germans cast votes only for parties), which one would receive their endorsement, only 23 percent said Mr. Laschet, according to the survey by the Forsa polling group.On Saturday, Mr. Laschet came under fierce public criticism after he was caught on camera chatting and laughing with colleagues, while President Frank-Walter Steinmeier was giving a solemn statement to reporters after the two had met with flood victims in the city of Erftstadt.Mr. Laschet, 60, who is the governor of North Rhine-Westphalia, was forced to apologize. On Tuesday he visited another devastated town alongside the chancellor.Chancellor Angela Merkel and her party’s chancellor candidate, Armin Laschet, behind her, visiting the flood-ravaged city of Iversheim on Tuesday. The town is in North Rhine-Westphalia, where Mr. Laschet is governor.Pool photo by Wolfgang RattayIf there is one thing Ms. Merkel has learned in her four terms in offices, it is how to be calm in the face of calamity — whether pledging to keep Germans’ savings safe in 2008, or wading through the flooded streets of eastern Germany five years later.Standing beside her Tuesday after meeting with volunteers in the city of Bad Münstereifel, Mr. Laschet tried a more statesmanlike tone. He offered an open ear and a supportive clap on the shoulder to people cleaning the mud and debris from their homes, as well as condolences for victims.“Nothing we can do can bring them back, and we barely have words for the suffering of those who survived,” he said, pledging to double his state’s contribution to emergency aid. “So that we, too, are doing our part,” he said.Ms. Merkel’s government on Wednesday approved a 200 million euro, or $235 million, package of emergency assistance to be paid out to flood victims immediately. That figure will be matched by the affected states.An estimated 6 billion euros, $7 billion, will be needed to repair the infrastructure that has been damaged, including roads, bridges, homes and buildings.Much of that money will flow through the finance ministry run by Olaf Scholz, a Social Democrat, who is also running for chancellor. Getting financial aid to people quickly could give him an edge, but so far he has failed to translate his position into a political advantage, experts say.“If we need more money, then we will make it available,” Mr. Scholz, 63, told reporters in Berlin, “We will do what we have to do to help everyone who needs it.”Markus Söder, Bavaria’s governor, right, and Olaf Scholz, the country’s finance minister and another chancellor candidate, visited the municipality of Schoenau am Koenigssee on Sunday.Lukas Barth-Tuttas/EPA, via ShutterstockMr. Scholz visited stricken communities in Rhineland-Palatinate last week and then headed to the southern state of Bavaria just days after the heavy rains stopped there. But he has failed to connect with voters in a meaningful way, experts said. His party gained only 1 percentage point in the most recent survey and Mr. Scholz’s personal popularity remained unchanged.“He is a candidate that people just can’t really warm up to,” Mr. Jun said.But if any party should be in a position to find a political advantage in the events of the past week, it should be the Greens, who have been pushing for Germany to speed up its transformation to a green economy for decades.Especially popular among the country’s younger voters, climate issues have helped the Greens to replace the Social Democrats as the second most popular party in recent years. But after their candidate for chancellor, Ms. Baerbock, 40, stumbled over accusations of plagiarism in a recently published book and inaccuracies on her résumé, even a deadly weather catastrophe appeared unable to lift the party’s standing significantly.The Greens remained firmly in second place, according to the most recent poll, with 19 percent support — enough to create a majority if they were to agree to join forces in a government led by Mr. Laschet’s conservatives, in a tie-up that many observers believe would be the most likely coalition.Making Ms. Baerbock’s position more difficult is the fact that she currently does not hold a political office that would give her the opportunity to make a public visit to the stricken regions, as do both of her competitors. Last week she decided against taking members of the news media with her when she visited communities in Rhineland-Palatinate afflicted by the severe weather.In several interviews afterward, Ms. Baerbock called for Germany to move more quickly on its exit from coal, currently planned for 2030, and to increase spending to better prepare communities for the dangers posed by extreme weather. She also laid out a three-point plan that included adapting to the changing climate, amid attempts to halt it.“This is not an either-or between climate precaution, climate adaptation and climate protection, but a triad that is actually decided in the same way in all the climate protection treaties worldwide,” Ms. Baerbock told ARD public television.In the wake of last week’s flooding, the Greens are no longer the only party making such calls, but as the images of devastation retreat from the headlines, her party remains in the strongest position to gain voters from the renewed focus on the threat posed by changes to the world’s climate.“I assume that the weather events will indeed raise the issue of climate change to the top of the electorate’s agenda, which will help the Greens,” said Ursula Münch, director of the Academy of Political Education in Tützing, but added that it would not be enough of an advantage to close the gap with the leading conservatives. “It still won’t help Ms. Baerbock into the chancellor’s office.” More

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      Germany Floods: Climate Change Moves to Center of Campaign as Toll Mounts

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      With more than 160 dead across the region, the receding waters revealed extensive damage as well as deep political divides around how far and fast Germans should go to stem carbon use.BERLIN — With the death toll surpassing 160 and rescue efforts intensifying, the once-in-a-millennium floods that ravaged Germany and much of Western Europe this week had by Saturday thrust the issue of climate change to the center of Germany’s politics and its campaign for pivotal elections this fall that will replace Chancellor Angela Merkel after 16 years in power.The receding floodwaters revealed not only extensive damage — homes wiped away, businesses lost, electricity and sewer systems knocked out and hundreds of vehicles destroyed — but also bitter political divides on climate policy in a week when the European Union rolled out the globe’s most ambitious proposals to cut carbon emissions in the next decade.Though German authorities said it was still too early to place a figure on the damage, its sheer scale shifted the debate from calls not to politicize the catastrophe to the realization that the policies behind it must now play a central role in deciding who will take over leadership after the election on Sept. 26.“The Weather is Political,” Germany’s ARD public television said in its lead editorial on the Friday evening news.“For a long time, chatting about the weather was synonymous with triviality. That’s over now,” it said. “The weather is highly political; there is hardly any nonpolitical weather anymore, especially not during an election campaign.”Residents were clearing mud and unusable furniture from houses on Saturday in Bad Neuenahr, Germany.Thomas Frey/dpa, via Getty ImagesThe death toll in Germany climbed to at least 143 on Saturday, while the toll across the border in Belgium stood at 24, the authorities there said.On Saturday, rescue workers were still sifting through ruin across the region. The German news media was filled with images of homes still submerged in muddy brown water up to the second floor and of bridges reduced to crumbled heaps of stone or tangled metal pylons.Tales of tragedy emerged, as well, perhaps none more poignant than in Sinzig, where neighbors recalled hearing the screams from disabled residents trapped in the waters that gushed into the lower floors of the residential home where a lone night watchman was powerless to save them. The event vividly raised tough questions about whether the authorities had been prepared and why flood warnings were not acted on more aggressively by local officials.More than 90 of those who died in Germany had lived in towns and villages in the valley of the Ahr River in the western state of Rhineland-Palatinate, the police said. Local authorities set up a hotline for citizens in the hard-hit area needing support, whether material or psychological, and issued a call for equipment to help provide basic infrastructure and even clean drinking water.The village of Sinzig, Germany, on Friday.Adam Berry/Getty ImagesMs. Merkel, who turned 67 on Saturday and has said she will leave politics after the election, was expected to visit the district on Sunday to survey the scope of the destruction, her office said. She spoke with the governor of Rhineland-Palatinate by video link on Friday, hours after touching down in Berlin from her trip to Washington.While in the United States, the chancellor and President Biden signed a pact that included a commitment to “taking urgent action to address the climate crisis,” which is to include stronger collaboration “on the policies and energy technologies needed to accelerate the global net-zero transition.”The European Union’s ambitious blueprint, announced Wednesday, is part of plans to make the 27-country bloc carbon-neutral by 2050, and will arguably affect no European country more than Germany, the continent’s largest economy and its industrial powerhouse.Coming a day later, the extensive flooding, which affected Belgium, Switzerland and the Netherlands, in addition to Germany, immediately drew parallels between the calamity and the effects of climate change from environmental activists and wide range of politicians.Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany and President Biden this week at the White House.Doug Mills/The New York TimesArmin Laschet, 60, the conservative governor of North Rhine-Westphalia, who is looking to succeed Ms. Merkel, has lauded his regional government for passing legislation on climate change, but critics point to the open-pit soft coal mines in the state that are still threatening local villages and his repeated emphasis on the importance of Germany remaining an industrial powerhouse.When pressed on Thursday during an interview on WDR local public television over whether the floods would be a catalyst for him to take a stance toward climate change, Mr. Laschet snapped at the moderator.“I am a governor, not an activist,” he said. “Just because we have had a day like this does not mean we change our politics.”But in 2011, Ms. Merkel did just that.After seeing the nuclear power plant at Fukushima, Japan, melt down after a tsunami hit, the chancellor backtracked on her government’s decision to extend the country’s dependence on nuclear power until 2033. The disaster led her to reset the target shutdown date to 2022, while increasing the amount of energy powered by renewable sources.Floods have a history of influencing political campaigns in Germany. In 2002, pictures of Chancellor Gerhard Schröder wading in rubber boots through streets awash in the muddy waters of the swollen Elbe, while his conservative rival remained on vacation, are credited with helping him win the election that year.Armin Laschet, right, the conservative governor of North Rhine-Westphalia, with President Frank-Walter Steinmeier of Germany, second right, visiting the Erftstadt fire department on Saturday.Pool photo by Marius BeckerPerhaps wary of that lesson, Annalena Baerbock, 40, who is the Greens party candidate for chancellor and Mr. Laschet’s strongest rival, cut short her vacation to visit stricken areas in Rhineland-Palatinate on Friday.She called for immediate assistance for those affected, but also issued an appeal to better protect “residential areas and infrastructure” from extreme weather events, which she linked to the changing climate.“Climate protection is now: In all areas of climate protection, we need to step up our game and take effective climate protection measures with an immediate climate protection program,” Ms. Baerbock said.Whether the flooding will be enough to lift support for the Greens remains to be seen. After enjoying an initial surge of excitement surrounding the announcement of Ms. Baerbock’s campaign — she is the only woman running to replace the country’s first female chancellor — support for the Greens has now dipped to around 20 percent in polls.That puts the party in second place behind Mr. Laschet’s conservatives, who have been climbing to around 30 percent support, the latest surveys show.“In the next two months, there will always be extreme weather events somewhere in the world,” said Thorsten Faas, a political scientist at the Free University in Berlin. “The focus is set after the catastrophe in Rhineland-Palatinate and North Rhine-Westphalia. The topic will determine the election campaign.”Olaf Scholz, 63, Ms. Merkel’s finance minister who is running for the chance to replace her and return his Social Democratic Party to the chancellery, also headed on Friday to flooded regions in Rhineland-Palatinate, where he pledged swift help from the government and linked the disaster to climate change.Workers clearing debris from the streets on Saturday after flooding caused major damage in the village of Schuld.Christof Stache/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images“I am firmly convinced that our task is stopping human-made climate change,” Mr. Scholz told ZDF public television. He praised his party’s role in passing some of Germany’s first climate laws when the Social Democrats governed with the Greens from 1998 to 2005, but called for a stronger effort to move toward a carbon-neutral economy.“What we still have to do now is get all those who have resisted right up to the end that we raise the expansion targets for renewable energies in such a way that it also works out with a CO2-neutral industry to give up this resistance,” he said.While the focus at the moment is on the role that environmental issues will play in the election campaign, questions are also being raised over whether the chancellor, who was a champion for combating climate change going back to 1995, when she presided over the United Nations’ first Climate Conference in Berlin, actually pushed her own country hard enough.Once she came into power, it proved harder to persuade her country’s powerful industrial and automobile lobbies — key supporters of her conservative party — to do their part.The result was legislation that Germany’s highest court ruled in April was not aggressive enough in its attempts to bring down emissions. It ordered the government to strengthen the law to ensure that future generations would be protected.“In recent years, we have not implemented many things in Germany that would have been necessary,” said Malu Dryer, the governor of Rhineland-Palatinate state, said in an interview with the Funke media consortium.She urged German consumers to support climate-neutral products and the country to “show more speed,” adding that climate change is no longer an abstraction. “We are experiencing it firsthand and painfully,” Ms. Dryer said.The city of Bad Münstereifel, Germany, on Friday.Ina Fassbender/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesMelissa Eddy More