With a record heat wave and an undeniable mountain of evidence, the climate smear campaign—heavily promoted in last winter’s blizzard of denial—is rapidly melting away.

Unfortunately, so is the time left to act:

• The last decade was the hottest decade on record
• The past 12 months was the hottest year-long period on record
• This past June was the hottest June on record

Last week, we built a giant “Climate Deniers” ice sculpture on the Senate lawn. This visual should be clear enough for even the most conservative senator to understand.

CNN joined us to watch it melt, along with any remaining doubts about the need for action.

This week, the Senate is finally preparing to act on long-delayed energy legislation. We must make sure they listen to climate scientists, not climate deniers.

Watch the CNN video and tell your senators not to let our clean energy future melt away.

We’ve spent the last year fighting for a comprehensive climate plan to secure our clean energy future. Now senators have to make a choice:

They can take action to cut carbon pollution, create jobs, and enhance our national security… or they can let our clean energy future melt away.

It’s their choice, but it’s our future. Tell your senators we are paying attention: http://consequence2010.org/MeltingAway

This our moment. In the next two weeks, we’ll find out where our senators stand. We’re ready for the fight.

Facing a climate crisis that will shape our future, young people have driven an unprecedented grassroots campaign for clean energy solutions.

Yesterday, we got a big boost from the top.

Speaking at Carnegie Mellon, President Obama declared: “The time has come, once and for all, for this nation to fully embrace a clean energy future.”

More importantly, the President matched his words with a promise for action.

Many of you signed a letter to President Obama last month, calling for clean energy leadership. Today, he responded with a strong commitment to fight for comprehensive climate legislation. Locking eyes with students in the crowd he told them:

I want you to know, the votes may not be there right now, but I intend to find them in the coming months. I will continue to make the case for a clean energy future wherever and whenever I can. I will work with anyone to get this done — and we will get it done. The next generation will not be held hostage to energy sources from the last century.

President Obama concluded with a familiar message: “It’s our job as a nation to advocate on behalf of the America that we hope for – to make decisions that will benefit the next generation.”

It’s our generation, and it’s our job too. We are leading the fight, the President is with us, the truth is behind us, and the senators can either get in line or find themselves on the wrong side of history.

Send the Senate the message that we will not be held hostage to special interests and petty politics. It’s time for them to fully embrace our clean energy future.

For young people, the fight for climate solutions is not distant or abstract. We aren’t fighting for future generations, we’re fighting for the future of our own. If we succeed in creating a new clean energy economy our generation will reap the benefits of millions of new jobs; if we fail, we will be the ones to face the consequences of catastrophic climate change.

That’s why young people have been mobilizing like never before. One great example of the clean energy activism taking place all over the country is a group of Maine students who organized a sleep out for clean energy at Bates College.

Students write letters demanding action at the Bates Climate Sleep Out

The Bates Climate Sleep Out successfully drew 150 students for your typical evening of live music, smores, and urgent letter writing. The event was not just a protest, it was about making their voice heard, and getting the message to Senators Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins that our generation demands a strong climate bill.

Maayan Cohen, one of the event’s organizers, explained why they held the sleep out and what they planned to achieve:

The climate crisis is the challenge of our generation and we are asking our Senators Snowe and Collins to act with urgency in helping to pass strong, just, and comprehensive federal climate and clean energy legislation. In order to resolve the climate crisis, I think we need to be working to make changes from both the ‘bottom up’ at the grassroots level and from the ‘top down’ through federal legislation. As constituents, I think that it is our responsibility to express our concerns and ideas to our representatives and demand that they listen and act accordingly.

The Bates Climate Sleep Out was used to achieve several goals: to acknowledge the great initiatives that have been taken to move Bates College towards carbon neutrality and to think about ways in which we can continue to improve and move forward as a college community, to create awareness of current climate and energy legislation and to express our voices through writing letters to our senators, and symbolically, to sleep out away from the comfort of our homes in solidarity with those who have or will become climate refugees in our lifetime.

Check out some more pictures from the sleep out:

The Green Waves Music and Arts Festival was more than just a few tents, free T-shirts and a bunch of power chords. It was a call for action. Thousands of students flooded UCF’s Memory Mall Friday for the first-year event, which was designed to promote campus sustainability and increasing awareness of several green initiatives going on around campus. It was also an event to show our state Senators that we are serious and we want Bold Climate Legislation passed!

The need for a more sustainable future helped fuel the idea for the event, which brought in more than 40 local bands and organizations to help gain student support. The theme of sustainability was everywhere to be found, from the vegan hot dog vendor, to the recycled art tents, to the environmental organizations represented such as Energy Action Coalition, Sierra Club, IDEAS, Re-power America, and National Wildlife Federation. At the end of the day, attendees were emerged in a possible green energy future and they were impressed! The Green Waves’ waste diversion goal of 75% was shattered through the use of a single stream recycling bin. Stunningly, the festival diverted 100% of the 1 ton of waste created by the 7 hour event.

While many students were drawn out by a live performance from Florida-based rock band Less Than Jake, even more took part in the several different activities going on throughout the afternoon and evening. All day, many different student organizations filled out “Define Our Decade” petitions, to show our senators what kind of clean energy future we envision. We collected over 360 petitions that day, and it has brought Florida into the leading active state on the campaign.

I.D.E.A.S., Intellectual Decisions on Environmental Awareness Solutions, hosted the event along with Campus Activities Board. We look forward to bringing an even bigger and better festival to Orlando next year!

To see more from IDEAS, visit our website at Ideas4us.org.

Last October, John Kerry laid out the stakes in a call with over 300 youth climate leaders: a clean energy future is only possible if we — as a generation — make our voice heard.

In response, we launched the Organize to be Heard Challenge, and thousands of young people have stepped up, generating thousands of phone calls, handwritten letters and petitions demanding action on climate and clean energy.

Unfortunately, despite the overwhelming call for action, there is one roadblock where all progress stops: our broken U.S. Senate. The Senate needs to know we’re sick of leaders who fail to lead and tired of government which fails to govern. They need to know that we’re not idealistic, we’re angry.

Call your Senator and tell them to stop standing in the way of our clean energy future!