Those bearing the title of chief economist are often called upon to perform the role of professional groundhog. Jeff Rubin, who was chief economist at CIBC World Markets until a couple of months ago, was a particularly prominent and enthusiastic prognosticator.

In the fall of 2007, he predicted US$100-per-barrel oil and for parity of the Canadian dollar with its U. S. counterpart. He was right, at least for a while. In January, 2008, he was predicting US$150 oil within five years. Three months later he upped that to US$200 by 2012. In fact, oil almost hit US$150 last year, but then came the crash of both financial markets and the oil price.

Unfortunately, Mr. Rubin had also projected in the fall of 2007 that "The subprime-mortgage meltdown in the U. S. is a temporary and non-lethal shock to the bull market in Canadian stocks." And he predicted that the TSE's main index would hit 16,200 by the end of 2008.

He was hardly alone in failing to foresee the extent of the subprime problem, but practitioners of economic macromancy need to be reminded of their cock-ups, particularly when they go beyond mere forecasting to projecting radical visions, or start seeing themselves as Cassandras.

Mr. Rubin has since departed from CIBC. This, he claims, is significantly due to his new book: Why Your World Is About To Get a Whole Lot Smaller. It's easy to see why the bank wouldn't like it. But that's likely not because it's too boldly insightful, as Mr. Rubin might believe. It's because Mr. Rubin has gone from the dismal science to the Dark Side.

The former CIBC star is both a fine writer and an engaging speaker, but he has contracted a bad case of Peak Oil Theory, a condition that afflicts those inclined to anti-materialism, Big Oil paranoia and Pollyanna-ish belief in policy wisdom (But then Mr. Rubin is actually in favour of carbon tariffs, which would collapse world trade faster than you could say Smoot-Hawley).

Mr. Rubin admits to having caught the Peak Oil bug from Dr. Colin Campbell, its leading guru. Dr. Campbell thinks that the plateauing of conventional oil production would mean "the end of economics." Similarly, Mr. Rubin claims to foresee the end of life as we know it, and asserts that "It is hard to say which possibility is more alarming to economists -- that the world has reached its peak oil production plateau, or that the rules of their vocation don't seem to be working any more."

But Peak Oil is essentially a primitive, static theory based on treating the entire energy economy as if it were a single, depleting oil well, underplaying innovation and failing to grasp -- or refuting-- the role of market pricing because, as Mr. Rubin claims, economics only tells "half the story." To argue with a Peakster, meanwhile, is to be cast as someone who "just doesn't want to believe."

Mr. Rubin's take is, like that of most peaksters, profoundly moralistic. Anybody who writes about "the 18-wheeler of globalization" being thrown into reverse is clearly no great fan of world trade. Expensive oil will mean "a severe curb on the free-spending lifestyle." But then he suggests that that life "wasn't particularly great to start with," since "Smog-congested cities, global warming, oil slicks and other forms of environmental degradation are all part of the legacy of cheap oil."