At today’s College Park rally, President Obama reiterated his promise to our generation to build a better future. While health care reform remained the topic of the day, Obama emphasized that the promise includes a clean energy revolution.

This promise is a good sign. However, the promise to our generation will not be fulfilled unless our generation stands up and demands it. The President cannot and will not act alone. We must stand behind him and demand action from Congress to make this vision a reality.

I promised to be president who would build a better future, who would move this nation forward. Who would ensure that this generation, your generation would have the same chances and opportunities that our parents gave us. That’s what I’m here to do. That’s why I ran for President of the United States of America… Part of that promise is an economy that leads the world in science, and technology, and innovation. Part of that promise is a clean energy revolution that protects our planet, protects our security, creates jobs of the future right here in the United States of America.

Salazar issued an order creating the Climate Change Response Council.

Associated Press reports that Interior Secretary Ken Salazar announced the formation of a Climate Change Response Council in a directive on Monday. A sign that climate change is a top priority to wide swaths of America’s youth that rank clean energy/climate legislation among their top issues.

Salazar signed an order setting up a Climate Change Response Council and eight regional response centers to study and respond to such issues as rising sea levels threatening to swamp historic structures and warmer temperatures shifting where wildlife live.

The order also commits the Interior Department to develop a plan to reduce its own greenhouse gas emissions, including setting a firm target.

“The realities of climate change require us to change how we manage…the resources we oversee,” the order reads.

Midwestern states will get hit the hardest by climate change, says study.

Huffington Post’s Ryan Grim notes a recent study that shows climate change will hit Midwestern states the hardest.

Climate change is, in fact, a regional issue, but not in the short-term way that the coal senators think, according to new analysis from The Nature Conservancy. The environmental group finds that rural Midwestern states will face the greatest consequences of climate change. The three that will face the steepest rise in temperature — Kansas, Nebraska and Iowa — are farm states whose soil will be significantly less productive as temperatures rise more than 10 degrees Fahrenheit there by 2100.

The rise by by 2050 — only 41 years from now — is also projected to be substantial.

See the interactive map here. Just another example of why congressional action on clean energy and climate legislation is so imperative.

All across America, young people are demanding clean, green jobs.

Young people are disproportionately affected during times of economic downturns and the current economy is particularly worse for young workers. Recently the New York Times reported that teenagers aged 16 through 19 are at the highest rate of unemployment since 1948 and job losses to young adults never recovered from the 2001 recession.

But that’s not all. According to a recent Economist article, “As the recession drags on, ever more youngsters are likely to find themselves left in economic limbo. Young people with jobs are more likely to graduate from high school and earn higher wages as adults. So lack of employment now may portend an even bleaker future.”

Several studies claim that clean energy and climate legislation could create as many as 2 million jobs. Legislation with strong energy efficiency standards could also be a lasting employment boom across the country decades for decades.

A recent national poll of American youth showed strong support for Senate action on clean energy and climate change legislation. Across the country, young people of various political stripes increasingly seek a future with more jobs, less pollution and greater security.

The poll surveyed 601 young people nationwide, ages 18-29, and was conducted between August 25-29 of this year.