Wildfires are raging across France, Spain and Italy, forcing mass evacuations in a record-breaking heatwave, but efforts by Europe’s firefighters to contain the blazes are being crippled by years of EU austerity and budget cuts. BreakThrough News’ Ana Vračar points to France, where critical shortages of Canadair water bombers and consistent cuts to forestry, civil defense, and meteorology to track extreme weather – in favor of doubling the military budget at NATO’s directive under Emannuel Macron – have left the country unable to contain the devastation, which near Bordeaux is being compared to World War II. She explains how monoculture farming and other profit-driven land policy like extractive logging in the Balkans and Eastern Europe has made the continent more vulnerable to the disastrous effects of climate change, and stresses that the fight over water access will dominate future geopolitics – pointing to the UK’s battle over privatization and Albania’s readiness to sell off a protected national park to Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump as stark warnings of where that path leads. Watch full episodes of BT Live, join breakthroughnews.org as a member today! #breakthroughnews

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