This article appears as part of the Unspun: Scottish Politics newsletter.

Gloating, politically-motivated schadenfreude should never be a response to human tragedy. But that doesn’t mean at times of tragedy that hard truths should be silenced. Indeed, the hardest of times often call for the hardest of truths.

So it must simply be stated: the fires that have devastated Los Angeles are exactly what America voted for in the presidential election. America elected an evident threat to the environment in Donald Trump.

Trump pulled the US out of the Paris climate accords during his first term. Ahead of his reelection he referred to the climate crisis as “one of the great scams of all time”. Most significantly of all, while on the campaign trail, Trump promised Americans that he planned to reverse climate policies and “drill, baby, drill” for fossil fuels.

Evidently, millions of Americans oppose this policy of self-harm. But America is a democracy. It made its collective choice. It voted for a man who shuns scientific truth, and the nation is today seeing what the consequences of such policies mean.

The actor James Woods, a major MAGA supporter, celebrated Trump’s reelection calling it “a blazing morning of hope”. Yesterday, he broke down in tears on CNN after his LA home burned to the ground.

“One day you’re swimming in the pool,” he said, “and the........

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