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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Our guest blogger is Tom Kenworthy, a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress.

For residents of the western United States — including California, which is fighting at least eight fires right now — a 1-degree rise in average spring and summer temperatures could mean a staggering increase in the extent and cost of fires, according to a recent study. In their report, researchers at Headwaters Economics, an independent nonprofit research group in Bozeman, MT, predict that climate change and the accelerating movement of western residents to areas near or in undeveloped forests will likely prove to be a devastating combination. The area burned by seasonal fires in Montana will increase by more than 300 percent and more than double the cost of protecting homes threatened by fire:

While fire prone lands are being developed, the climate is warming, leading to more large fires. . . . More development in these sensitive areas would lead to more wildfire suppression costs, even in the absence of climate change. Climate change will only exacerbate this effect.

Though the Headwaters paper focuses on Montana, using data from 18 large fires in the state during 2006 and 2007, it has implications for fire-prone areas throughout the Rocky Mountain West. And it builds on a growing body of evidence that inaction on climate change will cost the western United States dearly.

Earlier this summer, for example, Harvard University scientists published a study in the Journal of Geophysical Research predicting that areas burned by wildfires in the West could increase by 50 percent by 2050, with even larger increases of 75 percent to 175 percent in the Pacific Northwest and Rocky Mountain West. Those increases could have “large impacts on human health” because of the added smoke and particulates released into the air, the study said.

Since 2000, wildland fires in the United States have burned an average of more than 7 million acres a year, about double the average acreage for the previous four decades. Federal firefighting costs have also risen dramatically, according to the Government Accountability Office, averaging $2.9 billion per year from fiscal 2001-2005 compared to $1.1 billion in the previous five-year period, and “the majority of [Forest Service] large fire suppression costs are directly linked to protecting private property” in the wildland-urban interface, where new development is increasingly popular.

And in recent years, a widespread and so far unchecked epidemic of mountain pine beetles that has killed millions of acres of trees from Colorado north into Canada has laid the foundation for a potentially large increase in catastrophic fires. Climate change has played a role in that outbreak, too, as warmer winters spare the beetles from low temperatures that would normally kill them off, and drought stresses trees.

In the western United States, mountain pine beetles have killed some 6.5 million acres of forest. As large as that path of destruction is, it’s dwarfed by the 35 million acres killed in British Columbia, which has experienced a rash of forest fires this summer that as of early this month had burned more than 155,000 acres. In the United States to date about 5.2 million acres — an area larger than Massachusetts — have burned this year.

Destruction of trees by the mountain pine beetle, combined with climate change and fire, makes for a dangerous feedback loop. Dead forests sequester less carbon dioxide. Burning forests release lots of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. More carbon dioxide adds to climate change, which raises temperatures, stresses forests, and makes more and bigger fires more likely. It’s a frightening prospect, as British Columbia’s Forests Minister Pat Bell told an International Energy Agency conference last week:

I am not a doomsayer, I am not one who wants to say we are beyond the tipping point. But I am afraid that we are getting close to that.

Read more at the Center for American Progress.

Escalating a dispute between the companies as to who is to blame for the schedule slippage, Areva said Monday it will not proceed with work on the delayed Olkiluoto nuclear reactor project in Finland until Finnish utility TVO makes unspecified changes to the project.

Areva, the French government-owned nuclear giant, made that disclosure in a financial statement for the first half of 2009.

Ouch.  That is from Energy Daily (subs. req’d).  The Financial Times story begins:

The financial risks of nuclear power were cast into sharp relief on Monday as Areva, the French state-owned group, revealed new provisions on its troubled Finnish reactor project that virtually wiped out interim operating profits.

Double ouch!

The ongoing saga between Areva and Finland is now more like an episode of Desperate Housewives than a sitcom, however.  Or maybe Law and Order:  Nuclear Intent.

Last September, I reported that “Finnish plant’s cost overruns to $6.66 billion.”  Then in February we had a radioactivity-free kind of meltdown:

The Finnish nuclear power company Teollisuuden Voima (TVO) is seeking damages of EUR 2,400 million from the consortium of Areva and Siemens for delays in the construction of Finland’s fifth nuclear reactor in Olkiluoto.

Areva made clear in May it wasn’t going to keep swallowing the price escalation risk — see “Areva has acknowledged that the cost of a new reactor today would be as much as 6 billion euros, or $8 billion, double the price offered to the Finns.”

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Chalk up another one for the Obama-Democratic stimulus (see “EIA projects wind at 5% of U.S. electricity in 2012, all renewables at 14%, thanks to Obama stimulus!“).

WSJ:  Wind Farms Set Wall Street Aflutter

After nearly a six-month lull, Wall Street is getting back into the business of financing new wind farms.

Morgan Stanley and Citigroup Inc. have invested $100 million each to finance separate wind farms this month, taking advantage of a brand-new federal program that is paying substantial cash grants to help cover the cost of renewable energy investments.

Bankers say this is the beginning of an active pipeline of new wind-farm financing, as well as investment in large solar installations and geothermal facilities. Project developers and Wall Street appear to be viewing the federal cash grant program as such a good deal, industry experts say, it may grow much larger than its Washington creators expected….

Under the program, the government will give a cash rebate for 30% of the cost of building a renewable-energy facility, awarded 60 days after an application is approved. Investors are also given valuable accelerated depreciation deductions, which help offset taxes.

The Energy and Treasury departments have said they expect to spend $3 billion on the program, which started July 31 and runs through the end of 2010, and was part of the stimulus bill. But a government spokesman says requests for $800 million in grants were submitted during the first four weeks.

Some Wall Street bankers say they expect applications to grow to $10 billion, based on projected wind-power installations….

The strong interest echoes the $3 billion cash-for-clunkers program that provided incentives to trade in older, lower-gas mileage cars, and which was quickly overwhelmed by demand….

But unlike the popular cash-for-clunkers programs, there is no spending cap on the renewable energy grants, and the government has committed to spending as much as is needed to keep renewable-energy investments flowing….

Most of the investments are expected to go to wind projects, because the industry is more mature and in a better position to capture limited funds. “I would not be surprised if the program is ridiculously successful and spurs a huge amount of development,” says Liz Salerno, director of industry analysis for the American Wind Energy Association….

It’s not just Wall Street banks that are attracted. Iberdrola SA, a Spanish company that is the world leader in renewable energy by capacity installed, said in July that it expects to tap $500 million in cash grants for U.S. wind projects. “We’ve been in contact with the Treasury Department and we think the $3 billion is a minimum-type number,” said Ralph Curry, chief executive of Iberdrola’s U.S. business unit….

“If we have a quick recovery and we’re going like gangbusters again, you could easily get to $10 billion in two years,” says Kevin Book, managing director of ClearView Energy Partners LLC, a Washington consultant.

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The scientific literature paints a hellish future if we don’t quickly reverse greenhouse gas emissions trends (see “Climate change expected to sharply increase Western wildfire burn area “” as much as 175% by the 2050s“).  Even the watered down, consensus-based 2007 IPCC report acknowledged the danger:

A warming climate encourages wildfires through a longer summer period that dries fuels, promoting easier ignition and faster spread. Westerling et al. (2006 — see here) found that, in the last three decades, the wildfire season in the western U.S. has increased by 78 days, and burn durations of fires >1000 ha have increased from 7.5 to 37.1 days, in response to a spring-summer warming of 0.87°C. Earlier spring snowmelt has led to longer growing seasons and drought, especially at higher elevations, where the increase in wildfire activity has been greatest. In the south-western U.S., fire activity is correlated with ENSO positive phases, and higher Palmer Drought Severity Indices”¦.

Insects and diseases are a natural part of ecosystems. In forests, periodic insect epidemics kill trees over large regions, providing dead, desiccated fuels for large wildfires. These epidemics are related to aspects of insect life cycles that are climate sensitive.

Now brutal heat and drought are fueling massive California wildfires once again (see, for instance, the BBC piece “Heat fuelling California wildfire“).  We can’t expect much from the status quo media (see “CNN, ABC, WashPost, AP, blow Australian wildfire, drought, heatwave “Hell (and High Water) on Earth” story “” never mention climate change“).  So here is CAP’s Tom Kenworthy explaining “What a 1-Degree Temperature Increase Means for Wildfires” — and I’ll end with some comments on this positive or amplifying carbon-cycle feedback:

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“We had to struggle with the old enemies of peace: business and financial monopoly, speculation, reckless banking, class antagonism, sectionalism, war profiteering,” President Franklin Roosevelt told an audience in Madison Square Garden in 1936. “They had begun to consider the Government of the United States as a mere appendage to their own affairs. We know now that Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob. Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today. They are unanimous in their hate for me and I welcome their hatred.”

Can anyone imagine President Barack Obama saying anything like that? The nickname of Roosevelt’s successor in the White House, Harry Truman, was “Give-’Em-Hell Harry.” As the Republican minority, backed by an avalanche of special-interest money, mobilizes to thwart the health reform agenda of the Democratic majority, maybe the time has come for “Give-’Em-Hell Barry.”

The most dangerous deficit that the United States faces is not the budget deficit or the trade deficit. It is the Democrats’ demagogy deficit. Franklin Roosevelt, looking down from that Hyde Park in the sky, would not be surprised that conservatives are seeking to channel populist anger and anxiety, not against the Wall Street elites who wrecked the economy, but against reformers promoting healthcare reform and economic security for ordinary people. As he told his audience in 1936, “It is an old strategy of tyrants to delude their victims into fighting their battles for them.” But FDR would be shocked by the inability of his party to mobilize the public on behalf of reform.

Michael Lind has a terrific Salon column today, with the subhead, “Why can’t Democrats mobilize the public for healthcare reform? Blame the demagogy gap.”  I’d replace demagogy with the less incendiary and more accurate “rhetoric gap.”

Demagogues are a dime a dozen, and demagogy isn’t inherently persuasive or winning.  But rhetoric is.  Rhetoric is what makes a great, successful President (see “The greatest thing by far is to be a master of metaphor”: How to be as persuasive as Lincoln, 3).

I blog about the health care debate in part because success there probably makes it more likely we’ll see a climate bill and in part for what it tells us about Obama’s messaging.  The ‘good’ news on the first front is that the American Enterprise Institute’s savvy centrist Norman Ornstein writes today that “The odds remain reasonable that a solid, if not dramatic, health reform bill can make it through this process and become law. Any bill, under these conditions, will be a major accomplishment. The odds have been improved, not damaged, by the president’s approach” — thanks to “Obama’s Health-Care Realism.”  We’ll see.

Although he has the eloquence to be an FDR — and his achievements in clean energy and climate to date are far greater than most progressives give him credit for (see “The Green clean energy FDR: Obama’s first 100 days make “” and may remake “” history“) — Obama can’t truly be the clean energy FDR if he doesn’t master FDR’s ability to fight rhetorical fire with fire.

Now, unlike health care, where the whole message is a muddle, team Obama has half of the energy and climate message right (see “Clean energy messaging 101: ‘Green’ jobs are out, ‘clean energy’ jobs are in“).

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