I still think mankind should see their destiny as the stars (with the expectation that we would consume the solar and extra-solar resources as well)...

But to be quite honest I can never come up with any scenario superior to greed and violence driving this whole process. As in business building an economy of bringing resources back from space, and the military going along for the ride to build their space weapons and space wars (and to take a lot of initial risks).

Humanity has intellectuals who come up with the big ideas that coal or oil in the earth can help us build things, but these intellectuals are never the same people who put their back to the grindstone.

So to be frank, in this light Hubbert is being as big a dipshit as he thinks of the "consumers"...