Another week, another deadly extreme weather event – this time flash floods in central Texas that killed at least 120 people, nearly a third of them children.

On Friday, torrential rain from what started as an unremarkable storm that stalled over a parched desert area caused the Guadalupe River to rise by 26ft (8 metres) in 45 minutes, sweeping away scores of people, including more than two dozen young girls and their counsellors from a Christian summer camp built on the floodplain.

The horrific floods are among the most devastating extreme weather events to ever hit Texas, a state where many Republican party officials revel in climate denialism, fossil fuel expansion and, most recently, the Trump administration’s dismantling of federal agencies that research, monitor, prepare and respond to hazards such as storms, extreme heat and earthquakes.

More on what happened, and what happens now, after this week’s must-read climate headlines.

Questions about the local response to the sudden floods – in particular the tardiness of the weather alert and evacuation order – are understandably mounting, as are warnings that the death toll from extreme weather events will almost certainly rise due to the cuts and chaos caused by President Trump (and his billionaire donor Elon Musk) to the National Weather Service (NWS), National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa) and Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema), among others.

“This is what happens when you let climate change run unabated and break apart the emergency management system without investing in that system at the local and state level,” Samantha Montano, a professor of emergency management at Massachusetts Maritime Academy, told me this week. “It takes money, expertise and time to eliminate risk and make sure that agencies are prepared to respond when a flood situation like in Texas happens. And if you eliminate those preparedness efforts, if you fire the people who do that work, then the response will not be effective.”

Amid the relentless chaos, it’s imperative that we keep the receipts, so that one day elected officials and their backers can be held accountable. Reports suggest that, so far, more than a third of Fema’s permanent full-time workforce has been fired or accepted buyouts, including some of its most experienced and knowledgable leaders. Trump has vowed to dismantle the agency at the end of this hurricane season. Emergency management and the weather service work hand in hand, and the NWS has already lost more than 600 people, meaning offices across storm and flood-prone areas of the US are short of meteorologists and round-the-clock staffing cover. Two senior meteorologists at the NWS’s San Antonio office, responsible for forecasting in the Texas flood region, were among the casualties of a so-called efficiency drive by Doge (“department of government efficiency”) – including the one responsible for liaising with local emergency managers to help translate forecasts into likely impacts that inform local actions, such as mobile alerts and evacuation orders.

The “big beautiful bill” signed by Trump last week cut $150m in funding to Noaa set to help improve weather forecasts and warnings for events similar to the Texas floods. It also shrinks funding for the National Science Foundation (NSF), the premier federal agency supporting basic science and engineering research, by 56%. I recently spoke with multiple current and newly ousted NSF programme officers who warned that a generation of scientific talent is at the brink of being lost to overseas competitors such as the EU, China and Australia. Many others won’t be able to relocate, and may simply end up leaving science entirely.

Trump and his administration are meddling in the agency’s gold standard review process and forcing NSF experts to cancel active grants – and reject new applications considered to promote diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) or/and environmental justice. “NSF is being asked to make science racist again, which contradicts evidence that shows that diversity of ideas is good for science and good for innovation,” said one current NSF scientist. NSF-funded research has played a pivotal role in developing early-warning systems for all sorts of hazards, but more work is urgently needed to improve local accuracy and community acceptability amid the growing threats resulting from global heating. There is no other funding source capable of filling this gap.

Meanwhile, the hurricane and extreme heat season is just getting started in the US. What a total mess.

Read more:

The good news

The bad news

Guilt Trip: pilots torn between flight and the fight for the planet

In a new Guardian documentary released today, commercial pilots George Hibberd and Todd Smith grapple with the reality of their dream jobs, torn between childhood ambitions of flying and the impact of their industry on the world beneath them. From the cockpit, they witness first-hand the climate crisis unfolding below and decide to take drastic measures.

As part of Safe Landing, a community of aviation workers who want the industry to do better for the climate, they begin to transform their eco-anxiety and guilt into action. With an estimated 1.2 million passengers in the sky at any time, they ask when will society confront the urgent need to reimagine aviation – before it’s too late.

Read more from former Easyjet pilot George on how he thinks the aviation industry can be transformed here.

Down to Earth readers on the eco-friendly changes they made for the planet

“Palm oil has crept into an enormous amount of products that, I would bet, people are totally unaware of,” reader Brian McGloughlin emailed in to Down to Earth this week.

The production of palm oil leads to the devastation of habitats in south-east Asia and South America, which pushed McGloughlin to eradicate it from his life.

“I have found it particularly difficult, but have persisted, in terms of taking the time to read ingredients. A lot of the time, we see ‘olive spread’ type margarines will have palm oil as well as olive oil,” McGloughlin warns. “This is sneaky and misleading.”

“Yes, it takes time. Yes, it might be more trouble. Yes, it might cost a bit more. Yes, you have to put your reading glasses on, as small print is a huge problem for consumers. But if we can boycott palm oil, we can get it controlled – and that would be a great step,” he says.

Let us know the positive change you’ve made in your life by replying to this newsletter, or emailing us on downtoearth@theguardian.com

Profiling the Earth’s most at-risk animals

Population: 15,000-20,000
Location: Western Great Plains, US and Canada
Status: Near threatened

Mountain plovers nest across the western Great Plains and Rocky Mountain states, in areas with sparse vegetation or bare ground, such as prairie dog towns. The loss of these habitats is having a devastating knock-on effect on the plover population.

For more on wildlife at threat, visit the Age of Extinction page here

One image that sums up the week in environmental news

Credit: Ronaldo Schemidt/AFP

The Guardian’s Julius Constantine Motal has compiled this gallery of shocking pictures that tell the story of the catastrophic flooding that has devastated Texas over the past week.

The true scale of destruction is hard to capture in one photograph. But this shot by Ronaldo Schemidt, taken near Camp Mystic on the banks of the Guadalupe River, where dozens of children and counsellors were killed or remain missing, shows the stark environmental and human cost of the disaster.

For more of the week’s best environmental pictures, catch up on The Week in Wildlife here