When a river literally catches fire, you know you have a problem. The Cuyahoga river was less a body of water than a thick, toxic, oily gloop filled with junk that slowly oozed its way into Lake Eyrie. Warmed by the outflow from power stations, it was incapable of supporting life and poisoned everything it touched. It caught fire in 1969. Again.
Investigations into the fire led to the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency. The EPA was intended to clear up the mess that humans had left behind, while at the same time preventing this sort of thing from happening again. Such an agency is always going to be attacked from both sides, but it is undeniable that it has fulfilled its remit.
Undeniable that is, except to a clutch of fanatics who deny reality. The EPA has been attacked by DOGE, as with everything else. The scale and extent of the destruction is the same as elsewhere. It is essentially being reduced to a placeholder agency, presumably to fulfill statutory requirements, but without any power or ability to do anything.
This is the most frustrating thing about the new order. It’s as if they are looking at every mistake that humans have made in the last hundred years and they are determined to repeat them. And they do it with such enthusiasm. They have absolutely no understanding of how the world works or why. And these are the people who are in charge.