I know that the notes on Clarion say that there is "liitle demand for the burnable products of petrolium", but stop to consider:<br /><br />Clarion is as close to the perfect generator of petroleum as a planet could get. Millions of continuous years of planet-wide vegetable matter would result in untold trillions of cubic feet (or more) of oil reserves. And that's not counting natural gas that also forms in oil reserves.<br /><br />The better part of four centuries of petro-chemical extraction makes for a lot of gasoline and natural gas. Even if the gasoline isn't the primary produce it still would add up over all that time.<br /><br />Basic economics says that whatever is abundant is cheap. Whatever is cheap tends to get used over whatever is relatively expensive. Surely therefore Clarion would have lots of IC engines to burn that fuel, even if only to make room in the tanks for more of it from continuing production.<br /><br />I don't see them just dumping the stuff, not and maintain a supposedly "pristine" world. A planetary flora-mass that big would easily be able to handle the CO<sup>2</sup> emissions, especially since mosses are such efficient "scrubbers" of contaminants.<br /><br />Other than "tone" (ie, "it's the future, therefore all motors must be electric"), what reason can you come up with for Clarion not using ICE?
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