As I understand the current story of the thing, Easter Islanders harvested themselves into extinction. I believe Jared Diamond made that the thesis of his second book, and argued by analogy that we were in the process of doing the same thing.
This betrays a fundamental ignorance of economics. Specifically, we have a finely calibrated shortage sensor that works over short, medium, and long terms: price. Price signals indicate when something in demand is in increasingly short supply. Long before we ran out of oil, prices would be so high that everyone would cut back simply out of economic necessity. We need fear no oil shortage. We will get plenty of warning.
Price only works, though, when it is not interfered with. If for example the government uses taxpayer money to prop up enterprises that are not providing a service or product people want at a price they are willing to pay, then the shortage and glut sensor malfunctions. Products are made that nobody wants. This is the whole problem of the Solyndra (Sp?) business. Not only was our money wasted, but it was in effect funneled to certain plugged in people. This is not how free markets work.
As I have argued in the past, Keynesian economics can be seen not just as a system for wasting money (really, transferring it from ordinary Americans to connected Americans) while increasing the bureaucratic power of the State, but also as a price disruption mechanism. It puts a crowbar in the spokes of the free market, and does so by design. The intent, plainly, was to cause economic decline, so that more of the same could be claimed as the cure.
Keynes was not actually so stupid as to believe his economics worked “to” the purpose he claimed it did. Nor do I believe Paul Krugman is that stupid, although perhaps he really is. He’s certainly no Keynes, and his Nobel Laureate is every bit as earned as those of Barack Obama and Yasser Arafat.