The Obama administration said Wednesday it would take the first step toward regulating greenhouse gas emissions from airplanes, but it acknowledged it would most likely take years before stringent standards are enacted.

The Environmental Protection Agency said emissions from airplanes endanger human health because of their contribution to global warming. The finding does not yet impose specific new requirements on airlines, but it requires the agency to develop the rules, as it has done for motor vehicles and power plants.

Given the extended timetable of the rule-making process, and the lobbying by the airlines that international regulations should apply to all the carriers, it is almost impossible that airplane emissions rules will be completed during the Obama administration. The legal obligation for completing work on the airplane pollution rules would then fall to the next president.

The announcement represents the latest of President Barack Obama’s major initiatives to combat global warming. Next week, the agency is expected to propose new rules on emissions from heavy-duty trucks, and in August it is expected to announce new rules to rein in power plant pollution.

The EPA said it would also wait for current international negotiations on limiting carbon emissions in the aviation industry before publishing its final rule.

Separately Wednesday, a bill that would effectively overturn a new EPA clean water rule won a critical committee vote and now appears headed for a decision by the entire U.S. Senate.

The clean water rule was EPA’s attempt to re-establish jurisdiction over some remote streams, ditches and wetlands that could be sources of pollution to the nation’s rivers and lakes. A 2006 Supreme Court decision set the stage for the new rule by requiring the EPA to prove significant connections between potential sources of pollution and major waterways in order to regulate them.

But a bill passed Wednesday by the Environment and Public Works Committee removes much of the EPA’s discretion.