Re: Hubbert's peak

[Tom Walker <timework@xxxxxxxxx>]

To be fair to Hubbert and his followers, I think Hubbert's basic point was
precisely about the need for technical change and energy efficiency. "We are
not starting from zero." He was quoted in a 1983 article, " We have an
enormous amount of existing technical knowledge. It's just a matter of
putting it all together. We still have great flexibility but our
maneuverability will diminish with time." That's not exactly *ignoring*
technical change. It's more like advocating it.

To the extent his followers anticipate misery and conflict, it may have much
to do with the hitherto desulatory track record of the market and the state
about responding to the need for change. Another point is that the scale and
scope of change necessary here is "epochal" not merely adaptive fine tuning.
Who's to say whether a couple of world wars and a depression is not too high
a price to pay for the transition? People who ignore such details of
technical change are not really giving misery and conflict their due. Can
you see the devil in the previous sentence?

Like Keynes(!), Hubbert talked about the need to move from growth to a
steady-state economy. And, by the way, he does mention the need for
"stabilization of the world's population." Come to think of it, though, one
couldn't have a growing population and a steady-state economy without at
least a quantitative immiseration of that pop. could one?

Do people actually read anything by Hubbert before they pronounce sentence
on him or do they rely entirely on second-hand characterizations and vague
impressions?

You know, I happen to think Hubbert may be right for reasons that have
little to do with proven or probable or as yet undiscovered reserves of
petroleum. He may be "right" for all the wrong reasons. Rather than marking
some half-way point along the road to depletion, I would see the impasse as
arising from the "Contradiction between the foundation of bourgeois
production (value as measure) and its development..."

"...to the degree that large industry develops, the creation of real wealth
comes to depend less on labour time and on the amount of labour employed
than on the power of the agencies set in motion during labour time, whose
'powerful effectiveness' is itself in turn out of all proportion to the
direct labour time spent on their production, but depends rather on the
general state of science and on the progress of technology, or the
application of this science to production."

In other words, to *realize* the now necessary technical and cultural
changes would require abandonment of what Marx called "value as measure" and
what Hubbert called "American folk-lore" about the work ethic. "Most
employment now is merely pushing paper around. The actual work needed to
keep a stable society running is a very small fraction of available
manpower."


Jim Devine wrote,

>I don't think that the validity of the bell curve is that important to
>the discussion of Hubbert's peak. His basic point -- or rather, that of
>his followers -- is the same as that of David Ricardo & Thomas Malthus:
>long-term diminishing returns in the supplies of natural resources leads
>to increasing misery and/or conflict.

>Of course, as with Ricardo & Malths, that ignores such matters as
>technical change (improvements in the efficiency of oil use, etc.)


Tom Walker
604 255 4812