It has the look and feel of a collapsing house of cards.

John Quigley, secretary of the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection, resigned Friday after the disclosure that he’d distributed a profanity-laced email excoriating environmental groups for failing to back regulatory changes Quigley favored for the oil and gas industry as well as clean air regulations.

“Where the (expletive) were you people yesterday?” reported the Philadelphia Inquirer, quoting Quigley’s April 13 email, “The House and Senate hold Russian show trials on vital environmental issues and there’s no pushback at all from the environmental community? Nobody bothering to insert themselves in the news cycle?”

Sources close to Quigley’s boss, Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf, said the email confirmed the governor’s growing concerns that Quigley, a longtime environmental activist, was losing objectivity, and with it any hope for a working relationship with legislative Republicans — or legislative Democrats, for that matter.

It’s not unreasonable for individuals to have personal opinions while remaining objective in their professions. However, when someone in a professional role that demands objectivity fails to remain objective, bad things are bound to happen.

On Monday, DEP regulators disclosed they are dropping the largest fine ever imposed against a natural gas driller in Pennsylvania. The DEP has canceled its $8.9 million civil penalty against Range Resources, the Texas energy company previously accused of failing to repair a natural-gas well that DEP says contaminated groundwater and a stream in Lycoming County.

“Today, we made it clear that we take seriously our responsibility to protect residents and Pennsylvania’s natural resources,” Quigley said in the June 15, 2015, news release announcing the fine. “Range Resources owes it to the people of Lycoming County and surrounding areas to make the repairs necessary to immediately stop the discharge of natural gas to the waters.”

Perhaps the two incidents — Quigley’s resignation and the fine’s cancellation — are completely unrelated. And Quigley’s criticism of Range might be completely accurate. But because this criticism was uttered by the same now-disgraced Quigley who launched his recent email tirade against the environmentalists, it weakens its veracity. It opens a door for Range Resources and its attorneys to argue that Quigley was pursuing a personal anti-fracking agenda.

Intent on punishing the industry he was assigned to regulate, Quigley failed to gather the coalition he needed to support his regulatory agenda; he alienated legislators, business leaders and environmental groups; and he lost the support of his employer, the governor.

The net result is that Quigley probably damaged his cause more than he helped it. The question now is to what extent the damage can be reversed.