By Lisa P. Jackson and Nancy Sutley

Today we are excited to announce a new initiative in partnership with America’s young leaders. We’re asking you, America’s youth, to tell the world how you’re fostering sustainability and creating an America built to last. Starting today, submit your video message for the Youth Sustainability Challenge and share how you’re making a difference.

This June, leaders from around the world will convene in Rio de Janeiro to mark the 20th anniversary of the historic “Earth Summit,” formally known as the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development. The conference is an opportunity for the world to engage in a global conversation and take action to build a healthier and more sustainable future for our planet.

Here at home, we are focused on taking action to protect the health of our families and communities, and build a strong and growing economy and middle class. Americans are already working together to create innovative solutions to our shared global challenges, including through clean energy innovations and investments that support hundreds of thousands of jobs and have put us on track to double renewable energy generation in the U.S. by the end of this year.

The Obama Administration will continue to support American innovation and smart investments that will build a strong and healthy country and economy. We also believe that real progress begins with individuals who take action in their own homes and their own communities. That’s why, as we prepare for the conference in Rio, we are challenging America’s future leaders to do their part.

This Tuesday, May 8, Obama Administration officials and youth sustainability leaders will gather for an event at the White House to mark the launch of this Challenge. But you can get involved now. Join the conversation. Encourage others to do the same. Demonstrate how you have power to create an America built to last – and to change our world for the better.

• Twitter: Use the hashtag #EarthDayEveryDay
• Facebook: Like Administrator Jackson and The White House Council on Environmental Quality, and update your status and profile image.

Nancy Sutley is Chair of the White House Council on Environmental Quality
Lisa P. Jackson is the Administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency

By Cynthia Giles, Assistant Administrator, Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance

Our nation’s environmental laws are the envy of the world. Whether it’s the Clean Water Act or the Clean Air Act, we have set the standard for environmental and human health protection.

It is EPA’s responsibility to carry out and enforce those laws, and our enforcement program is essential to protecting the health of millions of Americans. It also ensures that companies are playing by the same rules, so that no business is put at a disadvantage because they are complying with the law and their competitors are not.

As we enforce our nation’s laws, a fundamental value is fairness. Vigorously following science and the law is what the American public expects.

It is deeply unfortunate that in a 2010 video an EPA official inaccurately suggests we are seeking to “make examples” out of certain companies in the oil and gas industry. We, and the official involved, regret the statement, for which he has apologized. It does not reflect our record over the last three years. Inevitably, some will try to imply that the unfortunate and inaccurate words of one regional official represent this Agency’s policy. Rest assured that they do not - and no honest examination of our record could equate our commonsense approach with such an exaggerated claim. Any notion that the oil and gas industries have been unfairly targeted simply doesn’t conform to the fact that oil production under this administration is higher than it has been at any time in the last eight years, and that natural gas production has experienced an historic expansion as well.

Our approach to enforcing the laws that govern this sector is evident in a recent innovative settlement with Marathon Petroleum Company that will slash thousands of tons of pollution that threatens nearby communities - while delivering cost savings to the company by improving efficiency and capturing more product that is currently wasted.

I strongly encourage any American who has concerns about our approach to enforcement to take a look at the work we have actually done. As head of the national enforcement program, I am confident you will find that a misguided statement by a regional official does not in any way reflect the three-year record of commonsense actions we have taken to reduce harmful pollution while EPA encourages the development of our domestic energy resources.

By Lisa P. Jackson.

This entry was previously posted on EPA’s blog page.

This weekend, people across the US and around the world will celebrate the 42nd annual Earth Day. After four decades, the event that started with 20 million Americans has blossomed into a day of service and celebration for nearly a billion people in every part of the planet. Every year I’m reminded that at the heart of Earth Day there is a simple goal: Help every person see the connections between our lives and the health of our environment.

The first Earth Day was organized as a series of teach-ins to start a discussion about the pollution in our communities, and those small beginnings sparked major changes: the creation of the US Environmental Protection Agency and the passage of the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act, which turns 40 this year.

Bringing people together around these issues continues to be essential, and we have been working to expand the conversation on environmentalism to new places. We want mothers and fathers to know how important clean air is to their health and the health of their children. We want African Americans and Latinos to join the conversation about environmental challenges in their communities, so we can address disparities in asthma, cancer and other illnesses, and work for environmental justice. We want you – wherever you live – to start your own conversation about protecting health and the environment.

Fortunately, this Earth Day we have more ways to connect, discuss and act than ever before.

EPA’s Earth Day page offers a range of ways for you to bring your voice to this conversation, and be a part of the work to protect our planet.

• Use our map to find Earth Day events near you – I’m planning to be on the National Mall meeting the young people who submitted cutting-edge projects to EPA’s People, Prosperity and the Planet Student Design Competition.
• While you’re out and about on Earth Day, snap a picture and submit it to our Environment in a Day 24-hour photo collection.
• Take EPA’s Greenquest quiz. Post your score on the wall and you may get a chance to share your story as a guest blogger for EPA.
• Be a part of the Six Words for the Planet micro-essay project.
• Watch the Look Beneath the Surface Earth Day video, then be a part of our EPA Conversations. You can share your ideas for protecting the environment, and vote on others.

We’re counting on you to tell your friends and family, your local officials, and your entire world about protecting our health and preserving our planet. I hope you’ll lend your voice to these important issues, Earth Day and every day.

About the author: Lisa Jackson is the Administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

By Gina McCarthy, Assistant Administrator, Office of Air and Radiation

Last week, EPA proposed a common-sense standard to address carbon pollution from future power plants. It’s disappointing – but not surprising – that the standard was immediately attacked with distortions, half-truths and blatantly inaccurate statements. An editorial in this morning’s Wall Street Journal is just the latest example of this fact-free assault.

Some background: there is currently no uniform national limit on the amount of carbon pollution new power plants can emit, and the standard we proposed last week is common-sense, achievable and in line with the direction the industry has been moving for a decade.

As the Administrator and I said repeatedly when we announced this proposal last week, this standard only applies to new sources – that is, power plants that will be constructed in the future. This standard would never apply to existing power plants. And we have no plans to address existing power plants.

Despite these basic facts, the Wall Street Journal, and others, continue to misrepresent the standard and distort its impact.

For example, this morning’s Wall Street Journal editorial incorrectly states that facilities that are installing pollution controls to reduce emissions of pollutants like mercury, arsenic and acid gases would have to comply with this standard as well. That is flat-out wrong. The proposed rule explicitly does not apply to facilities making such modifications. In fact, EPA did not propose a standard for any modifications.

Because EPA did not propose a standard for modifications, one cannot be finalized. As a result, there is literally no standard proposed in this rule that could ever be applied to any modified sources under any other part of the Clean Air Act.

Second, the standard reflects a trend in the market towards cleaner power generation that has been happening for a decade – not just for the past three years, as the Journal suggests. In fact, in the past decade – primarily driven by conditions in the market – only 7% of the new electric generating capacity in the US has been coal-fired. This is a trend the Journal’s own newsroom has reported on. A September 2010 article for instance, noted that “Power companies are increasingly switching to natural gas to fuel their electricity plants, driven by low prices and forecasts of vast supplies for years to come” and acknowledged that the trend began in the late nineties and had been “accelerating”- a year and a half before EPA even proposed this standard.

That said, we worked hard to ensure that this standard provides a path forward for new coal plants, with the help of technologies that reduce carbon emissions. Carbon capture and sequestration is an emerging technology – one this Administration has invested in – that is currently being permitted and built at facilities. Like most emerging technologies, it is expected that CCS will become more readily available and cost effective as it is refined over time – which is why the Agency built in flexibilities to the standard so that facilities can move forward now with the ability to implement CCS years from now..

Every projection, including those the rule relies on, makes clear that coal will continue to be the largest single source of electricity in the United States. This standard will not change that.

What this standard will do is provide certainty to the industry as they continue building the next generation of cleaner, more efficient power plants – facilities that will continue to burn a range of fuels. The standard has no projected cost to industry precisely because it is in line with investments industry has already made, and continues to make, in response to realities in the marketplace.