The comment made headlines around the country and around the world. Here was the new national head of the environmental protection, dissembling on the critical environmental issue of our time.

But compared to the other environmental news that has lately come out of the Trump administration, Pruitt’s comments are of surprisingly little immediate importance. That’s because, over the past three weeks, the White House and its new political appointees have begun to roll out a comprehensive environmental and energy policy. It is broad, creative, and industry-backed. To those who accept the mainstream consensus on climate change, there can only be one conclusion: The Trump administration has begun a sustained assault on Earth’s climate.

This war will start in earnest on Tuesday, when early reports from E&E News indicate that President Trump will sign an executive order repealing the Clean Power Plan, the landmark regulation issued by the Obama administration that restricted greenhouse-gas emissions from power plants. These same reports suggest that Trump will not direct the EPA to formulate a replacement plan.

This will be legally tricky, as the Supreme Court ruled in 2007 that the EPA must regulate carbon dioxide under the Clean Air Act. The agency itself formally ruled that greenhouse gases were dangerous two years later. Most experts have previously said that—due to these two precedents—Trump would have to put forward some kind of weak greenhouse-gas plan.

But Pruitt may fight these legal rulings. He argues that Congress has never specifically declared greenhouse gases to be harmful. And in his old job as attorney general of Oklahoma, he sued the EPA, alleging that the Clean Power Plan exceeded the executive branch’s Constitutional powers. Some industry groups are pushing him to drop the EPA’s regulation of CO2 altogether.

This appears only to be the beginning of the siege. The EPA and the Department of Transportation will also likely try to repeal the Obama administration’s rules on tailpipe emissions. These regulations, called the CAFE standards, limit the amount of greenhouse gases that cars and light trucks can release. They were first issued with the auto industry’s consent as part of the 2009 bailout for carmakers.

The New York Times has also reported that Pruitt may decline to issue California’s special waiver to address air pollution. I wrote last week about why this is such a big deal: Since the early 1970s, the federal government has allowed California special privileges to impose its own strict air-pollution rules. Other states with a history of air-quality problems—including Georgia, North Carolina, and the entire northeast—are then allowed to adopt these rules wholesale. Pruitt may try to knee-cap the the state’s rules that restrict greenhouse gases—cutting down California’s sweeping climate policy.