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The Environmental Protection Agency is finalizing a rulemaking revoking an Obama-era climate regulation that’s formed the basis of much of U.S. climate policy over the past 16 years (The Wall Street Journal, subscription).

What’s going on: “The reversal targets the 2009 ‘endangerment finding,’ which concluded that six greenhouse gases pose a threat to public health and welfare. The finding provided the legal underpinning for the Environmental Protection Agency’s climate rules, which limited emissions from power plants and tightened fuel-economy standards for vehicles under the Clean Air Act.”

• The agency submitted a proposal to the Office of Management and Budget last weekend to end the endangerment finding (CNBC). It had first announced its intention to do so last July, in response to an Inauguration Day executive order directing it to decide whether the rule should be kept.

What it does: The revocation eliminates the requirements “to measure, report, certify and comply with federal greenhouse-gas emission standards for motor vehicles, and repeals associated compliance programs, credit provisions and reporting obligations for industries, according to administration officials,” reported the Journal.

• It would not apply to rules governing emissions from power plants and other stationary operations, such as oil-and-gas facilities, though it “could open up the door” to removing rules affecting those sites, as they are covered by a different section of the Clean Air Act than the one under which the endangerment finding was issued.