The Environmental Protection Agency’s decision last month to repeal the Endangerment Finding is like tossing out the 10 Commandments.

That might sound hyperbolic. But sadly, it isn’t. After months of relentless anti-environmental regulatory efforts at the EPA, Administrator Lee Zeldin is now tearing out the foundation of our country’s climate regulatory framework. Known as the “Endangerment Finding,” this 2009 document is the scientific basis for regulating greenhouse gas emissions. By abrogating that finding, Zeldin and the EPA are essentially stripping away our government’s ability to regulate the emissions that are heating our planet. It is not only a profoundly misguided decision, it is one aimed at destroying the legal framework our country has developed to drive a coherent climate policy.

Interestingly, back when he was a congressman, Administrator Zeldin supported some climate regulations. At Dayenu, the leading Jewish climate organization that I direct, we had actually hoped that the first Jewish head of the EPA might honor the most basic of Jewish values—like pikuach nefesh (saving a life)—and pursue environmental policies that support a more livable future in the face of a fast accelerating climate crisis.

Instead, Administrator Zeldin has embarked on an almost unconceivable path. Since taking office earlier this year, he’s overseen the wholesale dismantling of the environmental policy framework designed to keep Americans safe. Scores of regulations have been repealed, imploding the basic legal and regulatory structure of American environmental policy. The coup de grace, though, has been his decision last month to abandon the Endangerment Finding.

The Endangerment Finding translates the lived reality of the climate threat—namely, that greenhouse gas emissions pose a threat to our health and well-being—into a legal framework that has enabled us to begin mounting a substantive response.

Like the 10 Commandments, the Endangerment Finding is not only a legal framework, it is also a codification of basic truths. The commandment not to murder (lo tirzah), for example reflects a truth: that it is wrong to wantonly kill another........

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