The Trump administration on Thursday revoked a scientific finding that long has been the central basis for U.S. action to regulate greenhouse gas emissions and fight climate change, the most aggressive move by the president to roll back climate regulations.

The rule finalized by the Environmental Protection Agency rescinds a 2009 government declaration known as the endangerment finding that determined that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases endanger public health and welfare.

The endangerment finding by the Obama administration is the legal underpinning of nearly all climate regulations under the Clean Air Act for motor vehicles, power plants and other pollution sources that are heating the planet.

President Donald Trump called the move "the single largest deregulatory action in American history," while EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin called the endangerment finding "the Holy Grail of federal regulatory overreach."

EPA has a clear scientific and legal obligation to regulate greenhouse gases, McCarthy said, adding that evidence backing up the endangerment finding "has only grown stronger" as the health and environmental hazards of climate change have "become impossible to ignore."