Have you been shopping recently and suffered from severe sticker shock on household staples? Sure, inflation and supply chain issues are contributors to soaring costs, but something deeper and more long-term is also going on: regulators and radical environmentalists are working in tandem to turn staple consumer products into luxury goods beyond the reach of most Americans.

The flare-up over banning natural gas-powered appliances is a great example of the kind of regulation some would like to impose on ordinary Americans. But similar radical regulatory moves with devastating effects for consumers are already happening across several industries. In Maine, for example, the families who have harvested the iconic seafood commodity from American waters for centuries may soon find themselves regulated out of existence.

Maine’s celebrated lobster industry is currently fighting for its existence against our own government, which is cracking down on lobstermen ostensibly to protect an endangered species called the right whale. While the species is certainly worth protecting, Washington regulators have put a new gloss on a decades-old law that will squeeze the life out of working lobstermen without clearly changing anything for the right whale. An important challenge to this new regulatory scheme is pending in the D.C. Circuit, leaving the courts to decide the fate of Maine’s lobster fleet.

You may ask — what changed? Congress hasn’t changed the law. So has lobster fishing suddenly become more dangerous to right whales? Actually, Maine lobstermen have taken great lengths to remain sustainable and mitigate the risks endangering these massive sea creatures. And they have been remarkably successful. It has been nearly two decades since a Maine lobsterman was responsible for the entanglement of a right whale. Nor has there been a documented death or serious injury of one at their hands.

But none of that matters to crusading environmentalists, followed by federal regulators, who have decided that a decades-old law now requires lobstermen to use expensive new ropeless lobster trap technology in order to continue harvesting lobster. Given that the Maine lobster industry is almost entirely comprised of very small businesses and operates on tiny margins at the whims of mother nature’s ebbs and flows, this edict from Washington is dire.

The expensive and unnecessary new methods ordered by Washington are almost certainly out of financial reach for most lobstermen. This means a centuries-old industry, full of family businesses and thousands of Mainers who depend on them, will be snuffed out, courtesy of their own government and radical environmentalists.

And to what end? It won’t help the right whales in any meaningful way. And whatever lobster industry that remains in the U.S. will be ceded to multinational corporations able to invest great sums of money in high-tech equipment or troll international waters with far less care than Maine’s lobstermen do now.

We find ourselves in an age where the livelihoods of thousands hang by a thread, under threat by overzealous regulators acting at the behest of extremist environmentalists pushing their own agenda. As a result, American consumers find themselves increasingly without choices.

Want to buy an affordable gasoline car without an expensive hybrid engine? Your options will continue to dwindle by the year. Want a spacious SUV for road trips with your children and their bulky car seats and gear? You may suddenly find yourself at a luxury vehicle price point. Want a dishwasher that will wash and dry your dishes effectively in under 90 minutes? Too bad.

Maine’s lobstermen prove this phenomenon is not limited to energy-consuming items.

The obstacles imposed by our own government will only hurt consumers, who will be forced to depend more on multinational conglomerates for their basic household needs. Already, many American families — even those living within miles from the coastline or fertile soil — find themselves offered only shrimp shipped from Indonesia, catfish from Vietnam, and bell peppers from Mexico at their local grocer.

If regulators succeed, expect Maine lobster to become an extreme luxury — even in Maine — and your options for lobster to come from a nameless, faceless, multinational corporation, likely imported long distances from places using less ethical and savory practices (environmentally and otherwise) than those the generations of Maine lobstermen have developed and currently use.

And so, the future of the industry, the lobstermen, and their families and communities hang in the balance while courts decide the fate of the federal government’s actions. The plight of the Maine lobstermen is not unique, as much of American life finds itself locked in these regulatory battles, but the immediacy of the question is dire.

Annie Talley is a partner at Luther Strange & Associates LLC. She served as deputy White House counsel and deputy assistant to the president in the Trump administration.