You can't have no environmental regulations whatsoever, CC, because that's not an idea that would be possible to sell to the general public. It would be like having no social services whatsoever. People won't agree to that.

The game has to be played so that things appear to be relatively "normal", otherwise the game breaks down. Besides, one of the key ingredients in the game is to always play both ends against the middle. So you do some stuff to make the environmentalists happy, and you do some stuff to make the business community happy, and you make sure you've got people well placed in both of those interest groups while you take care of whatever it is that you figure is really absolutely vital...like invading Afghanistan and Iraq, for example.

And you never give the public the real reason why you're doing it.