The less you care, the better you will do. This has long been the promise of conservative politics on both sides of the Atlantic. People who couldn’t give a tinker’s cuss about the consequences of their actions are elevated to the highest levels of government. Their role is to trash what lesser mortals value.

This describes the position of almost everyone in Donald Trump’s cabinet. In the UK, I feel it applies, among others, to Jeremy Hunt at the Department of Health, Boris Johnson at the Foreign Office, Priti Patel at international development and now Michael Gove at the environment department: the worst possible candidates are given the most sensitive portfolios.

Gove has attacked the two main pillars of protection for wildlife and ecosystems in this country, the European habitats and birds directives. As education secretary, he sought to erase climate change from the geography curriculum. Now, at a time of great environmental hazard, as the Brexit talks commence, he has been granted an opportunity to make his dream – and our nightmare – of destroying public protections come true...

... In 2011 David Cameron launched a “one-in, one-out” rule: any new regulation could be introduced only if an existing measure, with equal costs to business, was revoked. In 2013 it was escalated to one-in, two-out. This was the doctrine cited in 2014 by the then Conservative housing minister to justify his refusal to insist that sprinkler systems be fitted to new buildings to prevent fires from spreading. In 2015 the government ramped up the ratio to one-in, three-out, and locked it into law through the Small Business, Enterprise and Employment Act. As Christine Berry of the New Economics Foundation points out, this more or less bans new regulations. It ensures that business costs are transferred to society, where they remain, under this formula, uncounted...

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jun/21/new-disease-devastate-wildlife-tories-do-nothing-michael-gove