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The Environmental Protection Agency on Tuesday announced a proposal to rescind the landmark legal opinion that underpins virtually all of its regulations to curb climate change.

The move would end EPA regulations on greenhouse gases emitted by cars, while also undercutting rules that limit power plant emissions and control the release of methane by oil and gas companies.

“If finalized, today’s announcement would amount to the largest deregulatory action in the history of the United States, ” EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin said Tuesday at a truck dealership in Indianapolis.....

The 2009 “endangerment finding” concluded that greenhouse gases endanger public health and welfare, establishing a legal basis to regulate them as air pollutants under the Clean Air Act. The EPA’s new proposal strikes at this foundation and argues the Clean Air Act does not give the agency the authority to regulate greenhouse emissions.....

The endangerment finding has been at the center of the political fight over climate change for more than 15 years. In 2007, the Supreme Court ruled in Massachusetts v. EPA that the agency had the authority to regulate carbon dioxide, methane and other greenhouse gases as pollutants under the Clean Air Act. The EPA issued the endangerment finding two years later, and then established carbon limits for vehicles and power plants.

Experts say that going after the endangerment finding is a risky legal move. But if the administration is successful, it would eliminate the key hurdle to implementing Trump’s energy agenda.

“They think this is a holy grail to get rid of the whole thing in one fell swoop as opposed to having to weaken regulations one by one,” said Richard Revesz, law professor at New York University and former administrator of the White House Office of Information Regulatory Affairs. “It’s like betting on this big thing, but if you lose, you end up empty-handed.”