Corporations should be held responsible for the emissions caused by their employee’s commuting.
This would really change the discussion about return to office.
Lol they spent decades doing the opposite, generating the vast majority of emissions with big manufacturing and big livestock, and then successfully shifting blame on poor peasants for not sorting their recycling.
Yes and also by telling us to buy expensive electric cars because the environment needs us to.
How about buying electric instead of combustion while trying to not buy a new car unless it’s really necessary? That should reduce emissions, shouldn’t it?
Companies should be on the hook for all negative externalities. Make them internalities and watch how quick things change
But then how would they exploit the poors?
In Nottingham, UK they made it so companies have to pay for every parking space per year over a certain amount, and that money gets invested in public transport. Over time congestion has grown much slower in Nottingham than similar cities, I’m amazed that more cities don’t do the same.
Yes, but we need to see everyone in person!!!11111 There are intangible benefits and impromptu synergies, etc… /s
This is the way
It seems simpler to just tax gas at a more rational rate.
Simpler perhaps, but not really better. High gas prices hurt the poor disproportionately because it’s a larger part of their income, they don’t have as much control over WFH policies or their locations for reducing commutes, and they can’t typically afford to upgrade to fuel efficient vehicles. Plus since almost everything is transported by truck, high gas prices make the cost of everything else go up too.
I think part of the labor shortage is from people who did the math and quit after realising that they weren’t actually earning anything after subtracting transportation costs.
Well, for positions that could be moved to WFH perhaps. To others that would be unfair because companies would descriminate by distance to the office.
So you also make sure location discrimination is illegal as well. There can be multiple parts to the legislation.
Before we do anything else we should be working to end lobbying and put every single lobbyist leech on society out of a job. Otherwise this is all pipe dreams. They’ll just lobby it away.
I’ve seen that already, at least pre-Covid and in the U.S. Even though I’m pretty sure that asking that during an interview is illegal, I’ve been on post-interview sessions where someone inevitably says “yeah, but this candidate lives nearly an hour away, while this other candidate lives 15 minutes away…” so they found out somehow.
One criticism of WFH is that you’ll have increased energy bills since you’re home all day. Aside from the obvious reasons that’s wrong, this provides hard data showing that WFH is better for the environment in addition to being better for literally everyone except commercial real estate investors.
I would assume it takes far more energy on heating/cooling/ventilation systems for large buildings in general than it does for a series of small buildings that have classic ventilation systems called “windows that open to let in fresh air.” Something that is pretty rare in office buildings.
EDIT: Furthermore, large buildings usually have automated systems that keep it roughly the same temperature throughout the whole building while individuals in their own homes might try to keep heating/cooling bills low by choosing to only heat/cool specific rooms that they’re actually physically using. I know I certainly do this at home, no sense in doing temp control in a room no one is occupying (other than making sure it’s above freezing for pipes, etc.).
It really depends. For larger systems you can start taking advantage of economy of scale and a LOT of homes have those shit-tacular window units. Also, during the winter you can take advantage of body heat and residual heat a lot more to not have to run the heat as much as someone in a room with poorly insulated windows would.
And that ignores offices co-located with servers where you likely already have a pretty strong HVAC system that needs to run anyway.
And then there is just the personal impact. Employees tend to not (knowingly) pay the heating/cooling bill in an office building. They do at home.
I once worked in a high-rise office that would get uncomfortably cold (for me) in winter. I thought they were just being stingy with the heating, until I went into the office on a Saturday and found it was pleasantly warm. Turns out all the computers were keeping the office nice and toasty, and they were actively cooling the place during the winter to keep things at a “business temperature.”
Yeah. Having a laptop and extra monitor on all day at home probably uses less electricity than the fridge.
Ostensibly you could turn down your thermostat during the day to save money, but almost no one does this
Not if you have pets at home
Maybe I’m weird but I get my doggie sweaters and socks to keep him warm.
And when it’s 100+f in the summer? AC has to run enough to keep them cool
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That much is obvious. And for us commuters of public transport, it is such a relief to notice the traffic is not as bad and heavy as they used to be pre-pandemic, due to people now working from home.
With many businesses now wanting workers to return working on site, I think this shows the true colours of capital-owning class in relation to climate-change. Despite all the shifting of responsibility to make consumers monitor carbon-footprint, and corporate marketing of supposedly environmentally-friendly products, if CEOs and billionaires truly care about the environment, they would not even demand workers to return working on-site 5 days a week. Green-washing indeed.
Edit:clarity
The blatant disregard there will be of this research, which will be the case, tells you everything about the viability of trusting the captains of industry to navigate us away from climate collapse
Just being able to cook at home has reduced our food waste for sure.
I know it has reduced my food spending and leftover utilization.
I have solar panels on my roof. My employer’s building does not.
Um… no fucking shit.
Transporting millions of people dozens of miles twice a day OF COURSE has resource costs, in carbon and pollution and energy consumption. This shouldn’t be rocket science. Sadly it is for people who are afraid of change.
It also saves the workers money (as they don’t have to pay for fuel or public transit), it saves the company money (as they don’t have to pay for office space), it saves the environment (as you don’t have pollution from commutes), it reduces traffic (as you don’t have as many commuters at rush hour), and it’s generally good for just about everybody except commercial real estate developers renting out overpriced office buildings and Starbucks that’s paying absurd rents to be in the bottom floor of those overpriced office buildings. And of course middle managers who think that hounding their employees in person somehow accomplishes something.
I’ve actually started… walking to work. It takes me like 45min. So it’s not a short walk, though it’s a very short car commute. But the world is so different now that I’m walking. Having lived in car dependency vs walking is so different. And it’s healthy for you too. More people should try it, if i’s possible.
id love to do that. unfortunatly its either 90-120 minute drive (each way) or train-train-bike for 6km (2-2.5hr each way)
I’ma be honest with you, I would kill myself if I had to spend around 4-6 hours commuting each day. Or I guess find a different job.
its not hyperbole to say it was a contributer to my depression before. slept 5 hours a night most nights. next to no family time and absolutely zero me time. high stress job. those lost hours didnt help
Its not the destination, it’s the journey
There are so many CEOs putting their own private portfolio over the companies they supposedly run having a high staff attrition, and yet “they command such big salaries because they take on so much risk”.
I have heard this but do we have any evidence?
It makes sense, but gotta be able to prove it.
I went from commuting close to 2 hours daily, with much of that spent stuck in traffic, to working fully remotely. I’d have to get gas every week. Now I go weeks at a time before needing to get gas.
Even better, I used to work for a chemical company part of one of the big oil and gas corporations. Now I work for a green energy company. It cracks me up just how different the two situations are.
In the two weeks since my work mandated three days in the office I’ve spent $150 on gas. Awesome.
Granted part of that reason is the car broke down and I had to drive the truck.If the American owner class has taught Americans paying any attention the last century anything about how they operate, it’s “Fuck the commons/planet/species/future, burn it all if it makes me a dollar slightly faster!”
Profit in this case being all the corporate park land they own. Propagating human misery at every step for nothing more than to run up their capital ego score, that doesn’t even effect their living conditions at all.
Good thing they don’t consider their victims, people without significant net worth, human.
Does it even make them any money if someone is inside the building? It seems more like justifying a purchase that didn’t pan out.
It’s about holding value for them. Small/medium businesses paying rent in perpetuity to the corporate owners of business complexes. Yes, they’d rather others suffer and the planet burn if it means their capital investment is reaping dividends.
That’s why we’re on the brink, it’s not like man made climate change hasn’t been known for half a century. Our owners only care about their capital scores. They destroyed our republic and captured our government that was supposed to regulate/check them for us to increase their capital scores. They’re destroying the climate and hobbling the species for generations to increase their capital scores.
Why does everyone act surprised when our owner class acts like sociopaths? Thats why they’re in our owner class to begin with. Welcome to America, where practiced sociopathy gets you a corner office, and practiced prosocial vocations and empathy gets you a cardboard box on the sidewalk.
Your employer isn’t earning money by having you in the office. But they are losing money on the lease or mortgage for the property if you’re not in the office.
No, but it makes the cities where those buildings reside a boatload of tax revenue. I wouldn’t be surprised to find out that a lot of the “return to office” propaganda was coming from local governments freaking out about the abrupt downturn in tax income from commuters.
Corporate real estate is over represented in investments, so the loss is through the stock market, not the company directly
Edit: I actually don’t know if that’s true, but it’s the theory
While a lot of people work for big companies that may have commercial real estate holdings or are invested in REITs or something, most companies pulling workers back are not. And, indeed, they’re run by people that are choosing to pay for the privilege of lording their station over the hired help – though not to the employees, and many of them not purposefully.
They’re just taking productivity hits while swearing up and down that we’re all lazy thieves who don’t do a thing all day while not in the panopticon.
That’s probably primarily a consequence of bad zoning and transportation policy in the U.S - higher density zoning and public transportation/cycling infrastructure would address this more than enough.
Slapping a WFH-band aid on top of this mess doesn’t really address the root cause. That’s not to say you shouldn’t be able to WFH, work whichever way suits you best, but I don’t find this particular argument compelling as for a reason to advocate for WFH.
100% agree, we (the US) truly need better city layouts and public transportation. However, it’s nice to see more arguments that are “pro WFH” that aren’t just talking about the employees themselves or productivity. Not that it’s likely to change the path of management but it’s still welcome.
People who live in caves all the time cut emissions by 95%.
This is far better: People who live without social media all the time cut emissions by 66%.
People who eat more beans cut the cheese.
Only at first
People who die cut emissions 100%
Wouldn’t the decay of one’s be a source of emission?
Yeah but that only takes a couple months even in bad conditions.
people who burn less gas and consume less resources burn less gas and consume less resources, more news at 11.
but it’s nice they’re pinning numbers onto the amounts
Study in US
The difference is likely less in developed countries with functional public transport
And if they drive, they drive less ridiculous cars. The fact that the F150 is the most sold car in the US is just mind boggling.
Is it bad that I’m seeing more and more of those huge ass trucks here in Australia?
Those trucks make no sense to me.
Is it really a proper car if it does more than four miles to the gallon?
Wait is this really true?? Why do so mamy people feel the need to buy trucks?
Because they might need to move a large piece of furniture someday…
Wouldn’t they just hire a truck if they ever need that? I mean that’s what we did, we moved twice in the last 20 years and one involved moving over 300 miles away to another city
No way, that just makes too much sense
I mean there are companies that do this for you, carry everything over (from the front of house to placing them inside as well, like couches and tv and everything) so you don’t do anything really except paying them money (and ask for refund if they broke something 😡). Like I guess it’s called forwarding
