In a comment to this post on Tim Blair's blog, James Lileks writes:

Imagine you’re an editor at the New York Times. It’s the apogee of the profession. You’re in a brand-new skyscraper, built at great expense. You’re editing a piece about clotheslines, which are good because they’re nicer to the earth, and you’re all about being good to the earth. (You don’t get on the elevator to go up to your 45th floor office unless there are at least eight others in the car.)

You read this line:

In the meantime, our electric bill has dropped to $576 in March from its high last summer, reflecting a series of efforts to cut energy. (That’s still too high, so we’re about to try fluorescent bulbs.)

You get on the phone. “Kathleen?” you say. “Reading your clothesline piece, and I love it. Just wondering, what was your electric bill before?”

“Before what,” she asks.

“You say your electric bill dropped to $576 in March from its high last summer. What was your high last summer, and do you have an air conditioner?”

“I don’t see how that’s important,” she snaps.

“You’re right!” you say, and you hang up.

Ah, time for lunch!

As The Volokh Conspiracy noted last month, the 1980s' age of conspicuous consumption has morphed just slightly into the age of conspicuous virtue. Or as David Brooks wrote in Bobos In Paradise during the early days of this attitudinal adjustment, "A person who follows these precepts can dispose of up to $4-$5 million annually in a manner that demonstrates how little he or she cares about material things."