Universities are America's laboratories for ideas and ideals, and many of the schools sending students to PowerShift are already acting to reduce their own carbon footprints. In just one example, Middlebury College in Vermont recently "fired up" a $12 million dollar project to generate electricity and steam for heating, cooling, and cooking operations using a biomass generator run mostly on woodchips. The boiler is projected to cut campus carbon emissions by 40% AND save the college money, as wood chips cost much less than conventional fuel sources.

But it's not just college students who are riled up; On Monday, many PowerShift participants will join thousands of others in what is being touted as the greatest act of environmental civil disobedience in U.S. history. Capitol Climate Action will open with a prayer vigil, followed by a rally to galvanize opposition to coal power. In an act of peaceful civil disobedience, many participants will block access to the coal-fired power plant that partly powers Congress, and symbolizes our national dependence on dirty fuels. The event is endorsed by hundreds of organizations and individuals from Greenpeace and Students for a Democratic Society to Religious Witness for the Earth.

We know our leaders are listening. In his speech to Congress on Tuesday night, President Obama lifted up climate and energy as major priorities, issuing an historic mandate for a nationwide cap on carbon emissions, and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has already indicated intentions to bring a climate bill to the floor this summer. However, President Obama also touted clean coal, a technology that is, at best, questionable in its positive implications for our climate.

As Bill McKibben (professor and founder of 350.org) explains, it will take every instrument in the activist toolbox to convince our leaders, and our fellow citizens, to act urgently to save our planet and the civilization that depends on its resources. And the need for action could not be more urgent, as it seems that new reports on the increasingly rapid melting of the Antarctic ice sheets, and ensuing rise in sea levels, are released weekly. As we put all our energy into this issue, let us do what we can in our individual lives and as citizens not to fight the power, but to shift it- to the renewable sources that will power the sustainable economy of the future.