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.

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.

Click here to view the embedded video.

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.

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 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.

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!

The video features Leonardo DiCaprio, Jason Bateman, Justin Long, Edward Norton, Forest Whitaker and others calling for strong action for a clean energy future.

Take a moment to watch the video, share it with your friends, and email your Senators to tell them this is our moment.

The United States of America can lead in the development of clean energy technology and manufacturing while we lead in the fight against global warming.

Everyone knows we have a dependence on oil we buy from countries that don’t share our values. This threatens our security and our integrity. And it needs to stop. We know it does. Still, we’ve seen our dependence on foreign oil grow and pollute the air we breathe and endanger our planet. But we can change that. Now.

There’s a bill in the Senate that will break foreign oil’s stranglehold on our country, reduce carbon pollution, and create jobs right here in America—good jobs that pay well and can’t be outsourced.

It’s one of the most important pieces of legislation of our time. It’s a clean energy bill. And it’s been a long time coming.

I’m not dead yet

The conventional wisdom around Washington is that the climate bill is dead. It’s an obituary that’s been written before, but ask anyone in the political establishment and they will tell you that this time it’s for real. Ask any member of the insider DC press corps, they’ll tell you that Scott Brown’s upset Senate victory in the Massachusetts was the final nail in a coffin they have been hammering relentlessly all year.

They are wrong.

Passing comprehensive clean energy and climate reform is not going to be easy, but who ever thought it would be? The death of climate legislation may fit into the standard media narrative and make for a nice story, but it’s not true and here’s a few reasons why:

1. Real Bipartisanship

Unlike the months long health care “negotiations” Max Baucus conducted with hostile Republicans, the Senate climate bill has bipartisan participation from the get go. Conservative Lindsay Graham (R-SC) and self-appointed swing vote Joe Lieberman (?-CT) have teamed up with John Kerry to craft a bi-(tri?)-partisan proposal to cap carbon, and Susan Collins (R-ME) has put forward her own cap-and-dividend approach.

There are positives and negatives to this bipartisan route. Will the compromise bill that emerges include unsavory trade-offs (i.e. nuclear title, “clean” coal, drilling permits)? Almost certainly. But as painful as these compromises may be, they also pave the road to 60 votes for a price on carbon. Lindsay Graham might be an unlikely climate hero, but his involvement could be the difference between disastrous inaction and a cap on carbon pollution. (For more on this, see some cogent analysis from Joe Romm)

2. Obama’s Getting in the Game

A great deal of anger has been directed at the White House for their failure to visibly lead on climate. Much of it is deserved. However, there are signs that President Obama and the administration are ready to step out in front on this issue.

Previously, we’ve seen a lot of behind the scenes maneuvering from Obama and other climate leaders in the White House such as Lisa Jackson, Carol Browner, and Steven Chu, as well as some stronger public engagement including last month’s Youth Clean Energy Forum.

In an editorial this weekend, the New York Times called for Obama to make a forceful argument for clean energy jobs and climate action in his State of the Union speech. Early indications suggest that climate will, in fact, be a prominent component of Wednesday’s address to Congress.

In addition, the White House has a trump card of its own – the ongoing effort by Lisa Jackson and the EPA to limit carbon pollution through their independent regulatory authority. The threat of EPA action serves as the stick to compliment the carrot of Senate negotiations, and as demonstrated by Lisa Murkowski’s Dirty Air Act, is clearly making big polluters nervous.

3. You

The politics and policies are complicated, but there is also one big, simple reason to be optimistic about climate action: all of you.

The youth climate movement has been out in front, aggressively making the case for our clean energy future. The movement is getting bigger, louder, and more organized by the day. Even with Washington’s usual suspects ready (perhaps eager) to leave climate for dead, rather than scale back, youth climate leaders plan only to ramp up.

Never underestimate the power of passionate, organized activists to rapidly reshape the narrative and reconfigure the conventional wisdom.

Just last week, thousands of citizens contacted their senators to oppose the Dirty Air Act. On Thursday, Lisa Murkowski took to the Senate floor and not only directly addressed the Dirty Air Act label, but also announced she was indefinitely postponing the vote on her proposal. This partial victory was only the beginning of the fight (stay tuned for more!) but it demonstrates the impact targeted activist pressure can have on the legislative process.

It’s easy to feel frustrated or powerless in the face of the perfect storm of bloviating and bullshit which passes for American politics. Don’t.

It’s time to double down. Join our Organize to be Heard Challenge or take part in any of the other amazing youth climate action going on across the country. Figure out who’s organizing on your campus and get involved. Recruit your friends. Enlist your acquaintances. Draft that one guy you met that one time (yeah, him too).

Do whatever you can to make your voice heard. It’s our clean energy future and no one is going to secure it for us. We have a lot of work ahead, but someone needs to tell the DC establishment that climate isn’t dead yet.

Click here to view the embedded video.

P.S. Though his spirit is admirable, please resist all comparisons to a certain Black Knight

Sparty celebrating a succesful clean energy event

Tom Izzo and the Michigan State basketball team aren’t the only ones off to a strong start this season. The Spartans have also jumped to an early lead in the Organizing to be Heard Challenge, racking up hundreds of letters and phone calls asking Senators Levin and Stabenow to support clean energy.

As The State News Reports:

On Wednesday night, students from Spartans Repowering America, the MSU chapter of the national organization Repower America, painted the rock on Farm Lane in an effort to promote a larger interest in their cause. Overall, the group collected more than 100 letters and several video testimonies from students.

Some of the goals of Repower America include creating a green economy, bringing jobs to Michigan, ending dependency on foreign oil, increasing national security and creating a clean environment for future generations, Starke said.

“I think it’s important for students to have the opportunity to communicate with senators,” Starke said. “Clean energy is important for our future and anything we can do to be a part of our government is important.”

Read the rest at The State News

Consequence is the largest coalition of youth organizations ever assembled to call for congressional action on clean energy jobs and global warming. This is OUR fight. Youth have the most to lose from the impending climate catastrophe, and the most to gain from a new clean energy economy. In 2008, our decisive effort on the Obama campaign proved our political might. In 2009, our collective voice can be the deciding factor in the battle for strong clean energy reform. Standing together we cannot — and will not — be ignored.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Consequence Campaign partners are already running bold grassroots campaigns in every state in the country. In the posts below, you will hear from several of these partners in their own words about why they are involved in this effort and how you can take part.

It’s our time to lead. Together we will create our clean energy future.

Well, the US, with 1/4 of global greenhouse emissions, has more excuses than a student with a late term-paper about why it hasn’t done its part to help solve climate change. The people of the world aren’t impressed.

Two years ago in Bali after a dramatic plea from Papua New Guinea in the final hours, the US and other leaders agreed to make a global treaty in Copenhagen in 2009. According to the Bali agreement, the plan needs to have four key elements to bring all nations together (here’s the homework assignment). It needs to set mitigation targets for every country (reducing carbon emissions). It needs to protect forests from destruction (which cause 20% of global emissions). It needs to help poor countries develop more responsibly than we did by providing clean technology because the world can’t afford to repeat the dirty energy economies of the 20th century. And it needs to help poor countries deal with the present and increasing effects of the climate crisis.

The road-map to Copenhagen, agreed on by the leaders in Bali, places a responsibility on every national government, but the path has been most difficult for the United States. Stubborn, short-sighted politics have delayed action for years, but the window of opportunity for a global deal in Copenhagen has added urgency to our fight.

When the the timetable was set, climate activists like myself stepped up efforts to get the US on track in the two years from December 2007 to December 2009. We threw ourselves into an election that promised change and took on challenges on a historic scale. But that clearly hasn’t been enough.

Photo Credit: Robert Van Warden

We brought 12,000 activists to Powershift09 for the largest lobby day ever, and then stopped the U.S. Capitol plant from ever burning coal again. Just last month over 1,800 flash-mobs all over the world placed wake-up calls to world leaders on the need for climate action. And it’s working; the global movement we’ve been working for is here and its beautiful.

The one tiny, little problem is that a handful of US senators stand between us and a global climate treaty. In Bali, they said the treaty needed to deal with 4 things, things that the senate (and specifically the finance committee) can provide.

Luckily, large environmental organizations are pulling out all the stops to fight for ambitious reductions in domestic emissions – as ambitious as we can get. (But boy are my fingers crossed that we can get something better.)

What we’re lacking, and this is where you come in, are people fighting for those other three provisions. Adaptation, clean-tech transfer and forest protection receive mere lip-service in the initial draft of the Kerry-Boxer bill.

Developed countries need to put money on the table. How much? According to the Climate Action Network International policy paper, $150 billion per year, additional to existing aid, and raised from auction allowances. The European Commission Communication on Climate Financing is talking on a similar scale at least, calling for €50 billion annually by 2020.

What that works out to for the US, is in the range of 5% of allocation revenue for international adaptation, 5% for clean tech-transfer, and 5% for forest protection. The House climate bill in June allocated just 1%, 0.5% and 5%, respectively for those provisions. The Senate can do better and needs to do better. Whether we get a global deal or not could all come down to the next few weeks in the US senate.

We’re so close to the global climate deal we need, but three of the four major provisions required aren’t getting much attention. Let’s give the senators on the finance committee a reason to look beyond their petty interests and own up to the responsibility we have to the world. Take a look at the senate finance committee members and how to contact them.

Two years ago, we could only hope that a good US Senate bill would be the biggest remaining obstacle to a good global climate treaty. It took millions of calls and letters, thousands of individual meetings and one of the largest days of action the world has yet seen to get us here. We’re not done yet. If we can make the case for financing global solutions to the Senate, we can start to see the outlines of history — the story we can tell our grandchildren about how we fought for, and won, a planet they can still enjoy.

Morgan Goodwin is a fellow at the Avaaz Action Factory in DC