The United States’ Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) told the White House on Friday that it considers greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide, a danger to the public’s health and welfare, according the Washington Post.

The EPA’s finding could pave the way for federal regulation limiting greenhouse gas emissions under the nearly 40-year-old Clean Air Act.

The long-awaited finding, sent to the Office of Management and Budget, stems from a 2007 Supreme Court ruling that the agency must review whether greenhouse gas emissions pose a threat to public health or welfare.

Green groups said the EPA’s proposal is groundbreaking. “This is historic news,” Frank O’Donnell, head of Clean Air Watch, told the Washington Post. “It will set the stage for the first-ever national limits on global-warming pollution.

O’Donnell told the New York Times, the EPA proposal “sends an unmistakable signal that the Obama administration is moving forward on this issue.”

But industry is not as welcoming of the move. William L. Kovacs, vice president of environment, technology and regulatory affairs at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, said an effort to regulate greenhouse gases based on the EPA’s finding “will be devastating to the economy”, the Washington Post reports.

Some policymakers greeted the EPA’s action as the first step in a new approach to climate change.

“This finding will officially end the era of denial on global warming,” Democratic Rep. Edward Markey of Massachusetts, who leads a select committee on global warming, told KansasCity.com.