The New Yorker:

By Bill McKibben

FEMA’s newly installed acting director, David Richardson, left staffers “baffled” when he said in a speech this week that he had not been previously aware that the United States had a hurricane season, Reuters reported. (The Administration later said he had been joking.)

How bad is it? “It would be somewhat unnerving if Richardson, who has no emergency-management experience, actually didn’t know we had a hurricane season each summer and fall; it might be worse if he was making a joke, because he seems very likely to be the punchline,” Bill McKibben, a longtime New Yorker contributor who writes about climate policy, tells us, noting that the various computer models are predicting more storms than usual this year, owing in large part to hotter than normal waters around the U.S.

“What Richardson—and the rest of us—should fear most is that we’re headed into this hurricane season with blinders on, due to the cuts imposed with all the precision one would expect from Elon Musk and his DOGE cohort,” McKibben writes. “The National Weather Service is suddenly missing large numbers of forecasters and supervisors in key places such as Houston and Miami—and offices are launching fewer balloons, which are key to accurate forecasting. (But perhaps renaming the local body of water the Gulf of America will mollify it.) And DOGE has cancelled four hundred million dollars of the billion-dollar grant budget for AmeriCorps, leading to thousands fewer young people ready to muck out basements and toss debris after storms.”

“As for FEMA, CNN obtained an internal agency review last month which stated quite plainly that it was ‘not ready’ for the commencement of foul weather. About a third of the staff is gone, including many of its most experienced administrators, and the remaining ones are spending part of their time undergoing lie-detector tests to see if they are leaking to the media. And the agency is announcing that it will try to pass more of the costs of disasters on to local governments. ‘I say you don’t need FEMA, you need a good state government,’ the President explained earlier this year. Heckuva job, Donnie.”

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