I noted a while back that the U.S. savings rate was on the rise, that it looks like U.S. carbon dioxide emissions peaked in 2007, that President Obama was making a big push toward making America a nation of creators as opposed to consumers, and asked in May,0 “Is the U.S. consumption binge over?“  Well, I’m asking again:

Have you personally seen evidence of permanent behavior shifts or is this is just a small speed bump on the Autobahn to oblivion.

On Friday, a NYT piece, “Reluctance to Spend May Be Legacy of Recession,” made some similar points:

The Great Depression imbued American life with an enduring spirit of thrift. The current recession has perhaps proven wrenching enough to alter consumer tastes, putting value in vogue.

“It’s simply less fun pulling up to the stoplight in a Hummer than it used to be,” said Robert Barbera, chief economist at the research and trading firm ITG. “It’s a change in norms.”

Of course, it’s a long way from Hummers to John Stuart Mill’s “Stationary State.”  Also, the “the savings rate dipped to 4.2% from 4.5% in June and from 6.0% in May,” and even the 6.0% was only a blip to the 50-year average (the figure below is the 3-month centered average of the personal savings rate).

Still, the NYT notes:

On Friday, the Commerce Department said spending rose 0.2 percent in July from the previous month. But most economists see this activity as short-lived, pointing out that incomes did not rise. Some suggest the recession has endured so long and spread pain so broadly that it has seeped into the culture, downgrading expectations, clouding assumptions about the future and eroding the impulse to buy.

And the piece offers this interesting factoid about gardening:

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Rep. Thaddeus McCotter (R-MI), a four-term Congressman representing suburban Detroit, has scoffed at the idea of job creation in his state through clean energy reform. Despite the collapse of Michigan’s industry under the Bush administration, McCotter still believes that the American economy needs more tax breaks for polluters and less support for renewable energy. MoveOn.org criticized McCotter’s shameful record in an advertisement that notes the $112,930 in polluter contributions McCotter has received. Speaking with right-wing talk show host Frank Beckmann on WJR AM-760 yesterday, McCotter falsely claimed the green economy legislation he voted against in June, H.R. 2454, is named the “Cap And Trade National Energy Tax“:

I love it because they’re ashamed to say the name of the bill I voted against, which was the Cap And Trade National Energy Tax. Only a left-wing group would come up with 1.7 million new jobs. I know what’s going to happen to a manufacturing state like Michigan. I think the vast majority of our constituents understand that cap-and-trade would have been horrible for them. It would have raised the cost of energy and cost them jobs.

In reality, H.R. 2454 is officially known as the “American Clean Energy And Security Act of 2009.” The legislation, by setting standards for renewable energy, energy efficiency, and global warming pollution, will establish market incentives that reward work instead of pollution. The Political Economy Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, in a report commissioned by the Center for American Progress, found that a clean energy economy could generate 1.7 million new jobs through $150 billion in public and private investment each year — including 54,000 new jobs in Michigan, which would significantly lower unemployment.

Instead of supporting the clean energy economy that is even now rebuilding the American auto industry, McCotter is using his time in Congress on petty partisan resolutions and claiming hysterically that “this job-killing cap and tax bill is a fundamental shift from a manufacturing economy to an old, green economy called hunting and gathering.” Because of his record, McCotter has been named one of the first members of the “Caveman Energy Caucus“:

If “only a left-wing group would come up with 1.7 million new jobs,” then maybe McCotter should let one do so.

Conservatives hate the notion of green clean energy jobs because their entire anti-science, anti-climate, anti-environment message is built around the (false) notion of a trade-off between reducing pollution and jobs (see “Mything in action: Why conservatives hate green clean energy jobs“).  If you don’t care about the health and well-being of future generations, you certainly don’t care if they have good jobs (or any jobs, for that matter).

President Obama has cut through conservative myths better than anyone: “The choice we face is not between saving our environment and saving our economy. The choice we face is between prosperity and decline”¦  We can allow climate change to wreak unnatural havoc across the landscape, or we can create jobs working to prevent its worst effects”¦.  The nation that leads the world in creating new energy sources will be the nation that leads the 21st-century global economy.”

And so conservatives spin out disinformation on every clean energy jobs study (see “Heritage Foundation pushes ‘completely untrue’ attack on clean-energy jobs with a panel bought and paid for by dirty energy“).  In this repost, guest blogger Brad Johnson updates the story.

A Spanish paper that claimed support for green jobs “may destroy two jobs for every one created” has been debunked by an official publication of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). The paper’s conclusions “” led by Exxon-funded libertarian Gabriel Calzada “” have been cited by GOP leaders, Fox News, right-wing columnists, conservative think tanks, and Big Oil front groups to attack President Obama’s green economic agenda. However, the DOE’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) finds that the Spanish authors’ claim that renewable support kills jobs “is not supported by their work“:

The analysis by the authors from King Juan Carlos University represents a significant divergence from traditional methodologies used to estimate employment impacts from renewable energy. In fact, the methodology does not reflect an employment impact analysis. Accordingly, the primary conclusion made by the authors – policy support of renewable energy results in net jobs losses – is not supported by their work.

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