Two days after Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans and the Gulf Coast, the disaster shows little sign of letting up. The death toll is continuing to rise with one county in Mississippi alone reporting at least 100 deaths. The aftermath has in many ways been worse than the storm itself. The breach of two levees on Tuesday sent water flowing into the streets of New Orleans and now up to 80 percent of the city is submerged with some areas are reporting depths of up to 20 feet (6 meters). Concerns are rising about the spread of disease and drinking water supplies even as rescue operations -- many centered on plucking residents from their rooftops -- continue. Once again, the disaster makes headlines in Germany's major dailies and makes an appearance on editorial pages.

Much like on Tuesday, when the German Environment Minister Jürgen Trittin used Hurricane Katrina to hammer US President George Bush  for his reluctance to address global warming, worldwide environmental policies are on the minds of German commentators on Wednesday. Unlike Trittin, however, (whose spokesman Michael Schroeren said on Wednesday that he can't understand why Americans might be upset by the timing of his bosses broadside) the center-left daily Süddeutsche Zeitung lauded the American ability to cope with such a grand disaster while more gently suggesting there could be a link to global warming. The United States, it writes, is stoic and often heroic in the face of natural catastrophes and Americans quickly rebuild and get on with their lives. And they tend not to demand much from their politicians when such a devastating event takes place. Why not? Because "the majority of Americans still don't make a connection between the weather and climate change -- a phenomenon that can and should be politically addressed by the government."

Why the connection is not seen, writes the paper, is easy to understand when one considers the vastness of the country. Nature is seen as incredibly powerful by many Americans making it seem unlikely that humans can have much of an effect on things like climate and the weather. ("Those who have seen a tornado twist over the Oklahoma prairie must feel like a small and meaningless part of creation.") This, the paper posits, explains the difference between the Americans' attitudes toward climate change and that of the tightly-packed-together Europeans. The initiatives being made by many US states and cities to cut emissions are definitely a welcome sign, the paper continues. But it is time for the federal government to follow suit. But, "just as Sept. 11 clearly showed that America is vulnerable, it will likely take a couple more hurricanes of the magnitude of Katrina before America changes its appalling environmental and climate policies."

Like most other German dailies, the left-leaning Berlin paper Berliner Zeitung sees the connection between carbon dioxide emissions, global warming and increasingly powerful natural catastrophes as a more-or-less proven fact. "Almost all scientists agree on this." Yet rather than launching into a tirade against Bush, the paper throws darts a bit closer to home on Wednesday. The Christian Democrats (CDU), the party which will -- in the form of Angela Merkel -- likely soon take over the German chancellery, has little in the way of environmental expertise. Indeed, the paper observes, the party seems to have learned little from 2002 when they lost the election largely because of the devastating flood that hit Germany that year. Even if the party backs the Kyoto Protocol, "it sees the environment first and foremost as a hindrance to investment and innovation.... The message from the CDU is: The environment costs jobs." Given the results of disasters such as Katrina, however -- including billion dollar hits taken by insurance companies, climbing oil prices and falling stock prices -- it is clear, the paper concludes, that the opposite is true.

Not surprisingly, given that the hurricane is far away from Germany, other dailies also follow the Berlin paper's lead and look at Katrina's effects at home. And a quick trip to the gas station is all it takes to find the connection. The left-wing paper Die Tageszeitung laments that everyone blames everyone else for climbing oil prices. The drivers blame the oil companies who blame the oil traders who blame the markets who blame natural catastrophes. It is time, the paper argues, to become less reliant on oil and gas.

The conservative Die Welt isn't so concerned about being dependent on oil. It is, however, concerned about how expensive the stuff is getting. And, it argues, the price has little to do anymore with the rules of supply and demand. "At the moment," the paper writes, "the condition of the markets is one of nervous exaggeration." The paper pleads for a more rational, long-term approach to be taken by oil investors that is not subject to the whims of the weather and temporary supply difficulties. To back up its complaints, the paper points out that the New York market estimates that without the fear of and speculation about natural disasters and political unrest, the price for a barrel of oil would be somewhere between $40 and $50.