As Federal Protections Crumble, Can Failure Inspire Opportunity?
On my August vacation I made the mistake of diving into a beautifully written but psychologically challenging dystopian novel—Leif Enger’s I Cheerfully Refuse. We were on this trip in part to step away for just 12 precious days from the corrosive daily news feed that is currently life in the U.S. However, reading about a future where systems we take for granted had fragmented and collapsed under authoritarianism was hitting remarkably close to home. In search of some mental rest and relaxation, I set the book aside for the long flight home.
A few weeks later, in a conversation with a colleague, we talked about how broken the U.S. federal government is now when it comes to the environment, and how these times have exposed the weaknesses in the federal system. When the will of a single individual in the executive branch is sufficient to deconstruct federal agencies like the EPA and US Forest Service (and dozens of others) by slashing funding, driving out professionals, and undermining missions with 1984-ish doublespeak, it seems like checks and balances have become mere nostalgia. The federal system isn’t working to protect the environment (or a lot of other things) anymore. No rational creature destroys its own habitat, but this administration is hell-bent on trying, funded by the U.S. taxpayer.
This didn’t just happen overnight. The “government is the problem” cheerleaders were unleashed by Ronald Reagan in 1981, and we are reaping more than 30 years of those ideological investments in today’s rapid dismantling of research, regulatory protections, and government accountability.
Our “leaders” and those who support their agenda have made it clear the federal government’s current mission is to support corporate profit and billionaire ambitions (and vanity projects), and to find convenient “enemies” to blame for (or distract from) serious public concerns, from food prices to failures in health care.
Deregulation and lost administrative and regulatory capacity have been bad for the Great Lakes, of course, but the majority in Congress doesn’t care, or care enough, to do something meaningful about it. And no, you are not a Great Lakes hero if you voted for Great Lakes Restoration Initiative funding but supported gutting the EPA. We cannot “photo-op” our way out of today’s ecological challenges.
Many of us remember a time when Congress and/or the EPA would have stepped up to address serious challenges such as the well-documented PFAS contamination in the waters of the Great Lakes region. In the absence of federal leadership, individual states are trying to muddle their way forward largely on their own. It isn’t efficient and ultimately can’t be effective, but it seems to be the only viable alternative, and necessity is the mother of at least some invention. Canada, on the other hand classifies the 12,000-chemical family of PFAS (except fluoropolymers) as toxic under the Canadian Environmental Protection Act (CEPA), has banned or is phasing out specific substances and has set a precautionary threshold of 30 nanograms per liter (ng/L) in drinking water for 25 combined PFAS types. (Individual provinces and territories decide whether and how to adopt or enforce these limits.) At least there’s a game plan.
Meanwhile in the U.S. we are also dealing with the “let’s-fund-it, oh-never-mind” federal policies on controlling Great Lakes invasive species, and active denial about the impacts of warming waters and intensifying storms (despite the tornadoes, flooding, and lightening-ignited wildfires), all part of the large and expanding crevice of gaps in U.S. federal environmental leadership.
What is less obvious is that loss of U.S. federal leadership and resources are also undermining the capacities of transboundary and regional institutions, such as the International Joint Commission or the Great Lakes Fishery Commission, respectively. Both play an important role in cross-boundary consultation, cooperation, and joint goal-setting to safeguard the Great Lakes. However, their work has also been increasingly constrained as federal resources have shrunk, whether from the loss of internal (or other agency) science partners and technical capacities, or grant funding.
Yet while things are falling apart, the gaps and collapses could create unexpected windows of opportunity. After my conversation about the broken systems, I had a flashback to a graduate school class where we discussed the concept of collapsing hierarchies, which has theoretical applications in multiple fields. I’m stretching my memory here, and my simplification will probably make someone with expertise in this area cringe, but here’s a stab as to why this came to mind.
An example of the theory at work in human cognition is that when we are under severe, prolonged stress, our brains want to drop down to less complex efforts, or in the jargon, our “goal hierarchies undergo a top-down collapse.” If you’ve ever been working on a complex and ambitious project and are totally frazzled, you know how hard it can be to focus and produce, especially when all you can think about is sleep and a decent meal. These days, we’re so distracted in the daily “now what” efforts to keep basic protections in place, it is hard to carve out the mental energy to invest our time and imaginations on long-term solutions and innovative strategies that could emerge beyond current constraints. That’s an example of a negative collapse in cognitive capacity.
In the evolutionary realm, when there’s a collapse in an evolutionary “line” from a disruption like an asteroid or ice age, it creates an opportunity for branching in new directions, so a collapse may end one line of advancement, but may also create heretofore unpredicted pathways forward, which might be a positive outcome from a collapse.
So, with systems collapsing around us, we need to find ways to make space among the daily noise and stress to ponder the more complex challenges of potential new directions. It could be an opportunity to “leap forward,” not just rebuild the past, which we know was not sufficient. And, in that space, consider governing structures and solutions that could support goals for long-term resilience, health and sustainability in the Great Lakes and other ecologically cohesive regions. That’s asking a lot from weary humans, but we really need creative minds and serious thinking to get us unstuck.
Maybe the U.S. federal government can recover and lead again down the road, but it is unlikely we can just push “re-boot” after a future election and rapidly restore some of the congressional functionality and policy cooperation we remember from the 1970s and 1980s. Here’s where regional partnerships and agreements within and across the state, provincial, Indigenous, and local governments might be able to move more quickly and have more traction for near-term progress. Do we need federal involvement? Yes, but the U.S., in particular, needs to embrace effective strategies to protect the lakes and also to restore trust.
In the Great Lakes region we have more experience with regional and multi-agency environmental cooperation and coordination than do most places in the world. Can we explore new structures and strategies based on those established and emerging relationships? We’re going to need to envision and experiment with innovative approaches designed around necessary ecological goals, and less around whose district gets the biggest slice of federal funding or whether we can ever strengthen the Clean Water Act.
Following the recent UN General Assembly, the Atlantic Council announced its 2026 Global Citizen Awards. One of the honorees was Finland’s president, Alexander Stubb, who was being recognized for his leadership in advancing European unity, strengthening Finland’s role in NATO, and showing a steadfast commitment to democratic values.
At the awards ceremony, he reflected on the rapid changes in the global sphere, “I do think that we are witnessing a…moment in international relations…when the order is changing and our choices will shape what comes next.” He made the case for multilateralism, offering which, “..in my mind, is cooperative. It’s based on international institutions, norms, and rules.” Appealing to the assembly, he said, “What I ask everyone to do in this room today is to think what kind of agency you have in this world and what you can do to bring it back to the path of cooperation.”
In the Great Lakes region, we’re going to need to imagine functional solutions at all levels of government to protect and enhance our common life-support systems, because at the moment, we can’t rely on federal governments to lead in ways they used to. Renewed cooperation, supported by our transboundary institutions, historic norms of public engagement and transparency, and fair rules will be essential. We already have a lot of knowledge, relationships, and good people working across borders to safeguard the Great Lakes, and that sounds like agency to me. Let’s gear it up and forge the next era of progress.
Jane Elder
GLEN welcomes diverse perspectives on Great Lakes protection. Please note that the views in our posts are those of the author. To learn more about GLEN please visit our website at https://www.greatlakesecoregion.org/.
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