WASHINGTON—In what has been hailed as a pragmatic decision amid widespread acknowledgment that its mission had become futile, the Environmental Protection Agency announced it had shut down Tuesday after running out of salvageable environment to protect. “At this point, there’s really nothing we can do about any of it, so we figured it was best to just close up shop,” said EPA administrator Michael S. Regan, who praised the hard work his agency had done in recent years to “put Band-Aids on the gushing wounds of a dying planet,” but stressed that the U.S. environment was now a blighted wasteland beyond redemption. “A couple decades ago, cutting carbon emissions might have made a difference, but now America is on fire. Houses are falling into the ocean. There’s an 85-mile stretch of the Mississippi River nicknamed ‘Cancer Alley’ because the air is so toxic. Oh, and all our birds are dying. There were a couple ponds we thought might pull through, but they’ve been completely overrun by invasive species, so that’s pretty much over. We’re going to leave the phone number up and have it reroute to the Department of the Interior in case something happens to the wolves or something, but it’s just not enough to keep the whole department running.” At press time, the White House issued a statement in which it thanked the EPA for bowing out gracefully and confirmed all climate change issues would now be handled directly by the Federal Emergency Management Agency.