Yes, the sea defences and general infrastructure around New Orleans were neglected. But the neglect has gone on for years.

Bill Clinton, when he was president, refused money for improvements recommended as urgent by the engineers. But to hear what a lot of people have to say, you'd think the disaster was entirely Mr Bush's fault.

Of course, as the boss, the buck stops with him and he has to take his share of the blame. But the BBC are unscrupulously using the disaster as a stick with which to beat George Bush. They are doing this because he is their enemy: he is stereotyped as "right wing", whereas the BBC needs no stereotyping to be seen as to the left of Comrade Lenin.

The defence of the low-lying area in the southern states of the US is not the only example of neglect. You should see the devastation caused by flooding in the upper Ganges - and that happens every year. Closer to home, what about Boscastle? Nearer even to home than that, take a walk down the east coast of Yorkshire. We have friends living - I mean friends who used to live - just south of Hornsea whose house and farm is now under the North Sea.

As my mother used to say: "A bit of help and sympathy is worth more than a cartful of blaming." What America needs in this hour are pity and sympathy, understanding and help. But there is a worldwide conceit. It is expressed in the folly that all disasters ought to have been avoided. It amounts to the nonsensical assumption that accidents need never happen. This conceit was described by the ancient Greeks as "hubris" - pride, vainglory, bumptiousness, arrogance. And it was always followed by "nemesis" - that is suitable punishment.

You don't have to believe in the literal truth of the phrase "Act of God" to understand that some things which happen in the world are beyond our control. Contrary to what the BBC and the rest of the politically-correct, says, not everything that happens is "all our fault". We are not, as the sickening slogan has it, "all to blame, all the time".

There are some things - many things - beyond our control. One of these is the world's climate. It is preposterous to believe that human beings are the cause of what is sensationally referred to as "global warming".

Of course, we know why this insane notion is put about. It feeds the appetites of those who make a living out of saying, "We are all to blame", and all those who blame capitalism for every ill under the sun.

But global warming is nonsense nonetheless. The nature of the earth's climate as observed over millions of years is constant change. The established pattern is a succession of ice ages interrupted by short periods of warming. All the evidence is that another ice age is a little overdue. Certainly it is scientific and intellectual baloney to imagine we can extrapolate trends in global climate change by referring to events of the last few decades. Why, I am old enough to remember the 1950s when we had some cold and wet summers and we were told the ice sheet would be upon us any minute.

Arrogance, lies, vanity and hubris. As the poet said: "Pull down thy vanity".

* Peter Mullen is Rector of St Michael's, Cornhill, in the City of London, and Chaplain to the Stock Exchange.