Texas Floods: Donald Trump's Deadly Strategy

In just a few seconds, the Guadalupe River burst its banks. A devastating, sudden, and devastating surge. The sadly, very preliminary toll stands at 80 dead and more than 40 missing, including a dozen girls trapped in their summer camp.

Who could have predicted it? First, climatologists, who have been documenting the predictable effects of global warming for decades, the increasing number and intensity of extreme events. Then, meteorological services, sky watchers, whistleblowers, the first link in a chain essential to the proper coordination of rescue operations. But you still have to know how to listen. And you still have to want to understand.

This lifeline for all victims was broken, well before the torrential rains hit the southern United States, under the battering of a Trump administration obsessed with budget cuts. A pathetic climate skeptic and anti-science zealot, the White House tenant, for whom global warming is "a hoax," has methodically dismantled the federal agencies responsible for studying the climate and weather forecasting.

The prestigious NOAA, the American ocean and atmospheric observation agency, saw 12,000 of its employees dismissed by letter last February. From national to local, everywhere, Trump has cut staff and resources . How can we be surprised, then, that this weekend in Texas, panic competed with disorganization. The deaths are counted in the dozens and Trump perseveres. He "does not believe" that these staff reductions have any relation to the scale of the death toll.

With their feet in the mud and their hearts in anguish, around the Guadalupe River, rescuers continue their search. Rain is again forecast for the next few hours. The US president plans to "probably" go there. His responsibility is immense. The catastrophe striking Texas is the fruit of his double perniciousness: pursuing a climate-killing policy at full tilt while scrupulously destroying the agencies that act as sentinels of climate risk. Our house is burning, and Trump is playing with the barrel.