It’s almost hard to believe now, but a year ago, the Environmental Protection Agency seemed to make news every day. Scott Pruitt, the agency’s head at the time, was trying to dismantle myriad Obama-era environmental and public health regulations at the behest of polluting industries. He was also wasting millions of taxpayer dollars, primarily on first-class travel and a 24-7 security entourage, and retaliating against staffers who expressed concern about it. He even got a discount on a Capitol Hill condo linked to energy lobbyists. He was a classic Washington villain, and the media couldn’t get enough of it.

President Trump eventually tired of the scandals, forcing Pruitt to resign in July. Environmentalists rejoiced, but there was a silver lining to Pruitt’s bungling leadership and blatant corruption: It got the public to pay attention to more important matters, namely Pruitt’s pursuit of policies that threatened to cost billions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of lives.

Those same policies are underway today at the EPA, except by a different and deeply boring administrator: Andrew Wheeler. A former coal lobbyist, Wheeler is a far more effective skipper for Trump’s anti-climate, anti-science agenda than Pruitt was, but he’s not gotten as much attention for it—likely because he’s not spending his time trying to secure an “old mattress” from the Trump International Hotel or installing a soundproof phone booth.

Wheeler’s most significant step came on Wednesday, when he signed a final rule to repeal and replace the Clean Power Plan (CPP), President Obama’s signature regulation to fight climate change. Whereas the CPP would have required fossil fuel power plants to significantly reduce their carbon dioxide emissions, Wheeler’s replacement plan doesn’t require the industry to do much at all—and might actually be worse for the climate than having no regulation whatsoever.

The new Affordable Clean Energy (ACE) rule requires the power sector to cut its emissions by 35 percent over 2005 levels by 2030. It’s a measly target, one that “the industry is already on track to achieve, even without federal regulation,” The Washington Post noted—and one that is “less than half of what experts calculate is needed to avert catastrophic warming of the planet.” The rule also amends existing law to allow old coal plants to upgrade their equipment without installing costly new pollution controls. Thus, old, polluting coal plants that likely would have closed without the ACE rule may now remain open for longer.