This is on the media's midweek podcast. I'm Brooke Gladstone. Last Friday, the official website of the Environmental Protection Agency featured a press release with this headline.

Praise all around for EPA's greatest and most consequential day of deregulation in U.S. history.

This fulsome language was extolling recent moves by the president's chosen EPA chief, Lee Zeldin.

The EPA is rolling back environmental protections and eliminating a host of climate change regulations

in what it calls the biggest deregulatory action in U.S. history.

The EPA administrator is cutting 31 environmental rules regarding climate change, pollution,

electric vehicles, and power plants.

It's basically a gutting. It would be a gutting of environmental regulation in this country.

Administrator Lee Zelden wrote in a statement,

we're driving a dagger straight through climate change religion

to drive down costs of living for American families, unleash American energy, and bring back auto jobs.

Quite the contrast to Ronald Reagan's approach during his second White House run in 1984.

The White House recognizes that the environment is a very potential,

a strong election year issue.

It doesn't cut both ways like an abortion issue where any stand you take can lose you as many voters as it wins.

It's held strongly and dearly by a lot of people.

In a piece I reported back in 2017, I wondered, how did we get here? How did environmental protection morph from

an issue of near universal concern to a political football? And how did the EPA, an agency

created 55 years ago by Richard Nixon, become, in the eyes of the GOP, a job killer?

For clues, you've got to go back to the late 60s.

Just one glance and you'll see how this country's lost its pride.

In 1966, dozens in New York City died from oppressive smog over a single weekend, and other

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