I have re-posted many articles written by Engdahl relating to geopolitical analysis which have shed much light on the Empire's real policies and intentions. However, with this piece I think that he steps out of his area of competence to attack both climate destabilization forecasts and growing evidence of a Peak Oil future. He is outright dismissive of the former while concentrating his criticism of the latter view by merely citing evidence of new oil discoveries. It's quite easy to show that his arguments regarding the falseness of Peak Oil views are really quite shallow.
While I don't regard anyone as omniscient, I am very disappointed with Engdahl's shallow reasoning on this important subject. It's clear to me that he has unquestioningly accepted one of capitalism's premises: capitalist exploitation of energy resources to produce goods for profit can continue indefinitely. Thus he picks evidence--limited to new oil discoveries--that supports capitalist ideology of growth forever. All people, especially in major capitalist countries, are subject to indoctrination in capitalist ideology, and those who spend and benefit from many years in higher education are especially subject to this type of indoctrination. This, I think applies to Engdahl. Likewise because of this conditioning, he also ignores the tremendous amount of evidence that the burning of fossil fuels is contributing to the destabilization of a climate that can support human life.
Ignore the current glut of oil on the market today. It's the long term, at least two decades ahead, that is of concern about energy. The collapse in oil prices was caused by the decision of the medieval rulers of Saudi Arabia in collaboration with the directors of the Empire. The latter mainly wanted to undermine the economies of Russia (as they did in the 1980s), Iran, and Venezuela while the Saudi Arabian rulers mostly want to drive out competition from the smaller companies using oil-fracking technologies.
Thus, what this current oil price collapse and oil glut perpetrated by Empire directors and their Saudi collaborators will be reversed as soon as the impacts become too negative for Saudi and/or Empire interests. The Saudi Arabian government is already taking out loans to balance their government's budget. Meanwhile, many major oil companies based in the US and Britain will simply take advantage of the situation by buying up smaller oil companies at bargain prices. This is precisely why US ruling class directors went along with the Saudis in this scheme. Thus, this incident will only register as a blip on the screen of the world's consumption of fossil fuels over the next several decades.
No serious Peak Oil theorists, as far as I know, have ever argued that accessible oil supplies are diminishing. What they have most convincingly argued is that oil sources that can be economically accessed are diminishing. I am not going to waste time by offering a comprehensive critique of his narrow view regarding Peak Oil, but simply refer to others who have studied and written about Peak Oil for years: Gail Tverberg (who is already arguing that our economies are being threatened by the high cost of energy), Chris Martenson, and Nicole Foss of The Automatic Earth. Just listen to the first 16 minutes of the following lengthy interview with Foss.
It's clear that the continued operation of economies under capitalism are running into a sharp clash with economically accessible fossil fuels, especially oil. Thus she sees simpler societies as the only solution, but this is in sharp conflict with the growth imperative of capitalism.
