April 22nd, 2020 marks the 50th anniversary of the birth of the modern environmental movement,

Earth Day. The last half century is not marked by stunning success, but rather a one step

forward, two steps back, web of regulation and deregulation, regulation and deregulation that invariably

sets business and environmental protection in eternal, needless opposition. President Trump signed an

executive order on Tuesday. It directed the EPA to pull back Obama's waters of the United States rule.

The Act gives the federal government brought authority to limit pollution in major bodies of water,

as well as in streams and wetlands.

The president repealed a rule meant to prevent coal mining waste from going into waterways.

It's dead. There will be no federal program to reduce carbon dioxide or other greenhouse gas emissions.

In his proposed 2021 fiscal year budget, Trump has asked Congress for the fourth year in a row

to slash funding for the Environmental Protection Agency, essentially stripping away the last

remaining programs aimed at curbing climate change.

Meanwhile, earlier this month, as Americans were transfixed by the pandemic,

Andrew Wheeler, EPA director and former coal lobbyist,

announced that coal and oil-fired power plants need no longer comply with regulations that are designed to reduce

mercury and other toxic pollutants. To top off all of that, the EPA is also trashing a successful

emissions program for cars. The Trump administration is trying to roll back ambitious Obama-era

vehicle emissions standards, raising the

ceiling on damaging fossil fuel emissions for years to come, and gutting one of the United States'

biggest efforts against climate change.

So when did protecting the environment move from a bipartisan concern to a political football?

And how did the EPA, an agency created by a Republican president,

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