EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson used a planned trip to the National Press Club to hammer back at critics who have alleged that Obama Administration environmental policy would prolong the national recession. While speaking to the nation's journalists, Jackson addressed the growing fears of environmental actions, and what they might mean for certain businesses and the American economy in general.

"Once again alarmists are claiming this will be the death knell of our economy. Once again they are telling us we have to choose: Economy or environment?"

The remarks, which repeated the sentiment of President Obama's campaign that regulation can drive innovation (alluding to necessity's maternal relationship with invention), seemed to be aimed at a common thread among critics of the Administration. Those critics include several Democratic lawmakers from coal-producing states who have joined the largely Republican bloc from oil and natural gas states in asking the agency to re-think its short-term goals for CO₂ control.

Jackson also made a federalist case for quick EPA action, citing as an example the differentiating vehicle emission standards recently put in place by various states that left national automakers with the impossible task of meeting all of them.

Jackson also cited American industry's quick response to the late-2000's jump in energy prices, and the new marketability of green, which demonstrated the country's capacity for innovation in response to stimulus; of course, that stimulus was the market.

Click here to watch video of Lisa at NPC (available as a WMV from the National Press Club's website)

Click here for the full text of the speech.