I think you may have misunderstood Keith's comment aboutit being "all a matter of time-frame."
He's right--when the sun consumes all the hydrogen inthe hydrogen-to-helium fusion process and begins toexpand into a red dwarf, that's it; there's no goingbackwards, no putting the genie back into the bottle,no "renewing" the sun. It's purely a one-way trip.
Now, as far as humans go, we're far more likely to beextinct due to other reasons before we come anywherenear to that point.
But as far as the physics goes, the conversion of biomatterinto petrochemicals in the ground is more "renewable" thanthe conversion of hydrogen into helium in the sun.
It's just that we're far more likely to hit the near-termshortage crunch of petrochemicals in the ground thanwe are the longer-term exhaustion of hydrogen in thecore of the sun. ;)
2020: Hawking Radiation, take me away.
Mike