Alan,
I think you raise an extremely important point here. HL works well not only with a steady rate of technological advances, it works fine also with steady rates of reserve growth, steady rates of market-induced improvements in efficiency, and for that matter steady rates of improvement in government policies, if only we had them . . . :-(.

The fundamentals of Hubbert's thinking are stunningly simple. The objections to the theory, however, (as I see it) are based on a misunderstanding or outright denial of these fundamentals:
1. There is a fixed amount of oil in the ground, and for the sake of discussion I'll throw in natural-gas liquids, oilsands, biofuels and even shale.
2. First we got the easy oil, mostly from giant and supergiant oil fields. The easy oil is gone and will never return, regardless of technological advances.
3. The oil that remains is increasingly expensive to extract, despite technological advances.

I do believe in the importance of technological advances and in the power of the market to mitigate somewhat the increasing scarcity and cost of oil. But no combination of technological advances and market-driven re-allocations of resources is going to spare us great and long-lasting pain resulting from Peak Oil. Therefore, we need proposals such as yours--policies and plans based on long-proven technologies, because the implementation of your ideas would provide significant mitigation of the negative effects of peak oil.