When the Weather Goes Bonkers, Why Are We “Unbolting” the Rules?

The climate is doing that thing where it politely taps us on the shoulder… with a flying wheelie bin. Floods, heatwaves, droughts, storms — pick your flavour of “extreme”, and the menu keeps expanding. And yet, at the exact moment nature is demonstrating why guardrails matter, the voices calling for environmental rules to be rolled back have somehow become louder, better funded, and more influential.

Part of it is timing. When budgets are tight and people are fed up with delays, “cut red tape” sounds like a miracle cure. Housing targets? Infrastructure? Farming competitiveness? All real pressures. In the UK, planning reform and “regulatory burden” have become headline priorities, with government openly focused on reducing complexity and speeding decisions. But here’s the catch: environmental rules often get blamed for problems that are actually caused by under-resourced regulators, muddled processes, or years of not investing in nature and water systems.

You can see the tug-of-war playing out in planning and nature protection. In the past few months, there’s been a very public debate in the UK about weakening habitat protections to accelerate building and major projects — with cross-party MPs/peers and conservation bodies warning that “speed” achieved by lowering safeguards is a false economy. At the same time, nutrient neutrality (basically: “don’t add more pollution to already overloaded catchments”) has been reshaped via a new approach using Environmental Delivery Plans and a Nature Restoration Fund model. Supporters say it’s pragmatic; critics worry it can become “pay a levy and move on,” unless it’s implemented with real teeth and transparency.

Zoom out and it’s not just a UK story — it’s a global chorus. In the US, February 2026 saw a dramatic attempt to unwind the legal foundation underpinning climate regulation (the EPA’s “endangerment finding”), triggering immediate legal challenges from public health and environmental groups. In the EU, campaigners have warned about a wider drift towards “simplification” that can quietly mean watering down Green Deal-era protections. Different places, same political gravitational pull: when life feels expensive and complicated, “less regulation” sells well.

But here’s the uncomfortable truth: nature doesn’t do ideology. If rivers are polluted, they stay polluted. If soils degrade, yields fall. If floodplains are built on, water still arrives — it just arrives in your lounge. The UK’s own watchdog has been blunt that progress is too slow and we’re largely off track on legal environmental commitments — and it’s also pressing on current compliance failures, especially around water quality. Cutting protections while already behind schedule is like removing the smoke alarm because the beeping is annoying.

So what’s the sensible middle path? Not “rules for the sake of rules” or “bonfire of safeguards.” It’s smarter, faster, properly enforced regulation:

• Fix the plumbing of the system: fund regulators, simplify guidance, digitise processes — so compliance is easier and faster without lowering standards.

• Make offsets real: if development is allowed via delivery plans/levies, ensure restoration happens quickly, locally where possible, and measurably — not “nature promised sometime after the next ice age.”

• Follow the evidence: extreme weather risk isn’t theoretical anymore; planning and infrastructure need nature baked in, not bolted on.