The US Environmental Protection Agency is carrying out a sweeping repeal of landmark environmental regulations, rolling back rules on greenhouse gases, vehicle pollution, the oil-and-gas industry, and wastewater.

In a startling shift away from its founding mission of protecting the environment and safeguarding public health, the agency’s administrator Lee Zeldin said its priorities now are to “lower the cost of buying a car, heating a home and running a business.”

“Today is the greatest day of deregulation our nation has seen,” Zeldin said in a statement. “We are driving a dagger straight into the heart of the climate-change religion.”

In perhaps the biggest change announced Wednesday, the agency said it would work to erase the EPA’s authority to regulate carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the US — long one of the world’s top CO2 emitters.