Iceland to Voluntarily Go Oil Free in 30-40 Years

scottennis writes "Yahoo is carrying a story about Iceland's plan to wean itself from fossil fuels. The article states that Iceland is giving itself 30-40 years to kick the oil habit completely. Of course some researchers estimate that in 30-40 years we won't have much of a choice."

Comments

Is Oil Exhaustible?

[nick_davison]

According to an article on Detroit News, oil may actually not be exhaustible - at least in the way we currently view it.

Thomas Gold of Cornell University says oil deposits may not actually be from decaying animal life but from methane left over from the Earth's origin. If that is the case, vast deposits would apparently exist throughout the earth, not just the surface deposits we are using now.

What that says about man's ability to destroy his environment, given a potentially limitless supply of tools, I hate to even think. No idea whether Gold'll be proved correct or not, but it's an interesting counterpoint.

To those saying "missing the point": ditto

[Rogerborg]

You're right that the long term point isn't about whether oil is going to run out, but it's also not about how high the price goes.

In the long term, the point is about how much easily accessable oil we leave for our descendants to use. I mean the descendants that will need to bootstrap themselves after the next ice age or big asteroid impact. Because we're going to do squat to prepare for the first one; it's only after it happens (and it will) that our descendants will realise that we'd better get the hell off the planet while we still can.

Let's leave them some easily accessible resources, huh? This isn't some hypothetical piece of science fiction. We either care enough to plan for it, or we don't. What's it to be?