When Vice President Dick Cheney and his controversial National Energy Policy Development Group met last year, they were supposed to come up with a plan that would best serve the country. Instead, Cheney's task force, made up exclusively of energy-industry executives and lobbyists, sought massive subsidies for the oil, gas, coal, and nuclear industries; construction of 1,300 to 1,900 power plants; and increased drilling and mining on public lands. The only serious attention conservation and renewable energy received was when the Department of Energy dipped into those programs' budgets to pay for printing 10,000 copies of the White House plan.

Sierra decided to bring together our own energy task force. We didn't talk only to environmentalists. We also invited the head of a multinational oil company, a labor leader, an architect, a state public official, and a utility executive. Six leading energy experts took part in this discussion moderated by executive director Carl Pope.

There were genuine surprises, including an environmentalist arguing that growth can be good if we're growing the right things, and the man once responsible for some of our largest nuclear plants saying, 'In this age of terror, we just can't have them.' But all agreed that the path ahead can and must lead beyond fossil fuels-and that a peaceable, sane, and sustainable energy policy is within reach. All we need is political leadership in Washington with the vision and courage to choose wisely how we light the way ahead. Here are some highlights.

THE PROMISE OF A HYDROGEN ECONOMY
'If, after the oil crisis of 1973, we had decided we wanted to pay attention to 19th-century writer Jules Verne, who told us that we were going to eventually get our fuel from water-namely, by separating water into hydrogen and oxygen-we would probably have a hydrogen economy by now.'
-David Freeman, energy policy coordinator for Presidents Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon, now chair of the California Consumer Power and Conservation Financing Authority

'I, too, see the goal in this century being an electricity-hydrogen-energy economy that will make us independent of fossil fuels. . . . If we like Gulf wars and all the other issues that are dependent on our addiction to that oil source, then we don't need to do anything.'