Editor’s Note: This post is a guest contribution by Frank Sesno, Emmy-award winning journalist and former CNN Bureau Chief. ”Planet Forward” is an innovative, viewer-driven program driven by the power of ideas, as citizens make their case for what they think about the nation’s energy future. The show debuts TONIGHT (8pm), in a primetime PBS special. See Frank Sesno’s last post for CleanTechnica here.

What we’re hearing at Planet Forward is rumbles of a revolution.

Some expressions are serious, some are humorous. There are essays and poems and songs. But in almost all cases, if we take this stuff at face value, we’re hearing calls for an overthrow of the old ways we drive, work, travel, get around.  

A revolution in technology and green jobs to reduce carbon emissions, deal with climate change and improve our security.  A revolution in the energy marketplace to knock the oil-igarchs around the world down a notch.  Coincidentally, this is the bottom line of Barack Obama’s hugely ambitious energy program.  And it’s what citizens and experts alike weigh in on here at Planet Forward.  

This is a place where everyone has the chance to make their case about how we use energy, where our future energy should be, and how we should think about the issue.  We’ve heard from scientists and students, CEO’s and cab drivers, defenders of coal and oil as well as advocates of wind and solar.   We’ve even got a few politicians making their case!  It’s an orchestra of voices.

What makes Planet Forward different is that we connect some of the best ideas  – rated by the online community and reviewed by our Planet Forward editorial staff –directly to decision-makers.  Some go straight to the White House.  We do all this in a prime-time television special on PBS and through follow-on webisodes here at planetforward.org.  What’s most striking is how seriously the experts take the ideas and experiences of people out in the ‘real world.’  As they should.  

This isn’t the usual television fare – which is either policy wonks talking to themselves or high-decibel hosts shouting at the rest of us.  We wanted to do it differently.  So we invited President Obama’s top adviser on energy and climate change, Carol Browner, literally to sit down with some Planet Forward contributors who submitted particularly provocative or creative ideas.  She tells them what she thinks about their proposals, takes their questions, and considers what she’d take back to the White House as a result of the conversation.

And we’re going to keep the discussion going.  We’ve got a web sequel in the works.  Submit your video or written essay by May 15th and it’ll be in the running for review and comment by another top White House adviser, Van Jones, the highly acclaimed author of The Green Collar Economy and now Special Advisor for Green Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation at the White House Council on Environmental Quality.  We’ll put the exchange online – where you can see it, comment on it and share it with your social network.  

We invite you to comment on the videos already posted.  Raise questions, debate the merits.

This energy haul isn’t going to be easy.  There is a lot new under the sun (and in the wind) but it’s still very expensive, diffuse and in its infancy.   We’re going to be living with coal and oil and gas and nuclear power for a long time.  Some of them may have a rebirth as we develop new technologies for them.  Which are the winners and which are the losers – and at what cost — are among the questions we confront and must now try to answer.

Planet Forward is a chance for you to tell the world, and maybe the White House, what you’d do.  

Editor’s Note: This post is a guest contribution by Frank Sesno, Emmy-award winning journalist and former CNN Washington Bureau Chief. ”Planet Forward” is an innovative, viewer-driven program driven by the power of ideas, as citizens make their case for what they think about the nation’s energy future. The show debuts on the web first and then moves to television, in a primetime PBS special on April 15th.

I’ve been in the media for a long time. I know the power we have to reach and to teach.  We can take people places they’ve never been, show them wonders – and horrors – to inform or motivate. Good, important stuff. Of course we also drive people crazy. Critics shout that too many in the media are too removed, too insular, too quick to talk and too slow to listen. Too much is dumbed down or shouted out.

So when we created Planet Forward, we wanted to do something different. We wanted to take this huge issue facing us — how we move to a sustainable, 21st century approach to the energy we use – and explore it in a way that is open, inclusive, creative and smart. We wanted to combine the power of the internet and the reach of television to bring together citizens, experts and decision-makers in a place where imagination and ideas would prevail. Sure, serious business — but also spontaneous and fun and unexpected.

Planet Forward starts online and works its way over to television. We invite people to submit a video, an essay, a photo spread, whatever works.  We say show us your ideas, your invention or what your community’s working on. Share your research. Talk technology. Tell us how attitudes are changing.

We’re getting a great response and a lot of different approaches to the challenge. Some people talk straight to the camera, others have produced highly polished videos. Some people have composed original music or produced animations. We’re getting some really creative submissions from young people. But the voices come from all over the place – and belong to governors and students, taxi drivers and scientists, advocates and engineers, artists and architects.

We like to say that Planet Forward is a virtual public square where people can come together and have their own platform to make their case, share their expertise or their opinion.

Why have we done it this way?  Because it’s decision time, and we’re about to spend billions of dollars as we rewire America — and the world — so we can have the energy we need without destroying the planet or writing more blank checks to nasty folks who, by accident of birth, sit on top of an ocean of oil and hold the world hostage to what they pump.

The unique part of Planet Forward is the way we go from web to television. The online submissions will be the basis for the television show. Citizen and expert voices unfiltered. The ratings from the online community (rate the video one to five stars) will help us select the range of views and topics to be featured on our  PBS prime-time special on April 15th. Yes, tax day. It’s also one week before earth day.

On TV, we’ll have a few experts who’ll discuss and debate the online submissions they’ll see. It is the kind of exchange you could have with your smart neighbor over the back fence where you debate the price of oil or prospects for electric cars, or the future of coal.

The experts bring a mix of experience, expertise, and opinion to the table. Shai Agassi is an entrepreneur who has become a leading voice in new energy plug-in cars. L. Hunter Lovins is an outspoken advocate of green business practices. James Connaughton shaped the country’s climate and energy policy for the last eight years in the Bush White House.

Then Carol Browner, President Obama’s top advisor on energy and climate, will look at the submissions and speak directly with some of the people who put them together. We’ll see what she has to say – and what she’ll take back to the White House.

Almost everyone says they are for green energy; the debate comes in how we get there.

Planet Forward can make a difference. The public is the driver of the conversation. People who don’t normally sit in front of the camera shape the debate. Decision-makers and experts listen to what they have to say and then respond, not the other way around. We think this is what makes Planet Forward such a ground-breaking form of new media.

>> For more information on this project, see PlanetFoward.org