Does Hubbert Peak Bode Ill for World System?

To the WSN List,

You should check out Bill Tamblyn’s recent post on Safehaven Longwaves concerning the Hubbert Peak. {{ http://www.safehaven.com/forums_showmessage.cfm?id=1136 }}

His post here is pretty good and an engaging debate about the matter has developed on list between Tamblyn and another member, “Wavemechanic”. Well worth your while to take a look and see. Check out the other messages in the thread as well while you're there.

What’s the import for World System analysis? The argument Bill’s been making (with the Hubbert Peak and parallel info.) is for the fall of the West and with it the onset of a cataclysmic global crisis ... of society, economy, and resources our world uses for energy needs. He characterizes the next longwave to come up in history as “The Longwave from Hell” and that, civilizationally-speaking, the West is in the throes of Late Empire.

What are we to make of this “bearish” outlook on the world (system) and socioeconomic systems? And for that matter, what’s the merit of such “bullish” and “bearish” perspectives in the first place? … Markets, in their systemic context, go up … and markets … go down. I wonder really what the use is in the framing of paradigms that are exclusively upward-focused or downward-focused. I’d argue the general trend is neither exclusively in a climb or a plunge; it’s in an economic process regulating itself in its cycles. The system is balancing itself around a point of equilibrium.

Luke Rondinaro

The Consilience Projects