While most activists spend the Congressional recess at town halls, one advocacy group has decided to throw a carnival.

Young activists with Consequence, a left-leaning environmental group, debuted a mock carnival on Capitol Hill earlier this summer that celebrated the oil industry's victory in delaying climate change legislation.

Now they have taken the show on the road.

With the help of Clean Energy Works, a broad coalition of environmental groups, the group is traveling through college campuses and cities in a dozen states east of the Mississippi River.

"The CarnivOil portrays how Big Oil money is flowing through Congress. People respond to it and they understand it," Benton Strong, a spokesman for Consequence, said. "It's a good way to hammer it home."

With stilt walkers, chocolate donuts, and balloon tosses, the CarnivOil looks quite a bit like a real festival. But look closer and the political undertones become obvious.

A boxing match between an oil CEO and a crab that has been rigged so the crab always loses. The hammer throw meter lists some of the world's worst oil spills.

And people who successfully throw a "tar ball" at a target get to watch oil spill onto an activist dressed up as a turtle.

The activists hope that, while having fun, participants reflect on the influence oil industry lobbyists have on the Senate and sign up to pressure Congress against blocking government regulation of greenhouse gas emissions.

The lighthearted carnival helps them talk about their setbacks in a positive way.

In the absence of a comprehensive climate change bill to lobby for, the environmentalists have been trying to stop Sens. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) and Jay Rockefeller (D-W.V.) from preventing Environmental Protection Agency regulation.

"If they're not going to go forward, we can't allow them to go backwards," Strong said.

The tour comes as many colleges begin classes and was designed in part to recruit new members to the advocacy groups involved.

Only one Consequence staff member is traveling with the equipment – the stilt walker. The rest of the people involved in the CarnivOil are local volunteers with groups like the Student Public Interest Research Groups.

The group bought many of the costumes for the event online on sites like eBay. They called friends with young children to borrow toys and built some of the games themselves. They also rented equipment from professional carnival companies.

"When the idea came up in spring, we thought, 'That's crazy,'" Strong said. "It's been really successful."

-- Ambreen Ali, Congress.org