Day of the Axe, 35th of Hagwinter, 525 M.E. (Deneb): If it seems like I've been writing a lot about environmental policy this week, it's because it's been quite the week for environmental policy news. Even the New York Times noticed, with the headline, In One Week,  Florida Man Moves to Reshape U.S. Environmental Policy (okay, "Florida Man" was my embellishment). As one expert put it, this was the week from hell for environmental policy in the US.

The rollbacks came one after the other last week, potentially affecting everything from endangered species to wetland habitats. On Monday, the EPA proposed to strip federal protections from millions of acres of wetlands and streams, narrowing the reach of the Clean Water Act. On Wednesday, federal wildlife agencies announced changes to the Endangered Species Act that could make it harder to rescue endangered species from the brink of extinction. And on Thursday, the Interior Department moved to allow new oil and gas drilling across nearly 1.3 billion acres of U.S. coastal waters, including a remote region in the Arctic where drilling has never before taken place.

The proposals could reshape U.S. environmental policy for years to come. Unless stopped by the courts, each proposed rollback could do irreparable harm to the nation’s water quality, critical habitat, and marine ecosystems.

While all this was going on, down in Brazil, some 3,300 miles to the south, negotiators from nearly 200 nations, notably not including the US, could only muster the most noncommittal of possible commitments to maybe, someday, think about possibly ending the use of fossil fuels. Or not.

Fortunately, it could take the government up to two years to finalize the proposals unveiled this week. At that point, environmental groups and other opponents could challenge the rules in court, leading to lengthy legal battles. But Lee Zeldin, the Stable Genius' eminently underqualified EPA administrator, said the goal was to write regulations that would be “durable and withstand future swings of presidential elections to come.” He also suggested that 2025 could set a record in terms of environmental rollbacks.

Here's your so-called protector of the environment bragging about how he's not doing his job: he boasted to some podcaster, “We will do more deregulation in one year than entire federal governments in the past have done across all federal agencies combined.” Ladies and gentlemen, your EPA, telling us that he's going to let polluters go unwatched.