Google CEO: Oil is Finite But Information Is Infinite

(gigaom.com) -- By now Google’s (GOOG) CEO Eric Schmidt has said several times that he’s not interested in the position of Chief Technology Officer in the next administration, but that doesn’t mean he’s stopped giving politically tinged speeches on the topic of energy. Schmidt gave a talk yesterday for the New America Foundation on how the power of information and the open model of the Internet can help solve the oil and energy crisis.

“Oil is finite, but information is infinite,” said Schmidt explaining that the goal was “to take the structures of information and apply it to what is the life blood” of the economy ie. energy and oil. Schmidt pointed to how the power of the Internet in bringing information to the world, saying that one day, “almost all of the world’s people will have access to almost all of the world’s information.” That, he said, can create both transparency — helping to deliver the truth in a wisdom-of-the-crowds type of way — as well as “engagement” and a two-way dialogue over important issues like energy.

In the same way that Obama used the Internet and web sites like YouTube to create engagement and passionate supporters, the Internet can help the energy crisis by creating an informed — and action-oriented — user base, said Schmidt. Al Gore expressed a similar sentiment at the Web 2.0 Summit earlier this month when he said we need to use the latest web tools to organize a social movement in order to help rescue the Earth from climate change.