I work for the Canadian government. During an all-staff meeting for my department, our Deputy Minister said in front of God and everyone that he figured the carbon emissions were about the same between working from home and commuting to government offices. A couple months later he got promoted to be the Deputy Minister of Environment and Climate Change Canada.
The Earth is doomed.
The guy has only studied political science... Imagine if they put people with a background actually related to their ministry in place instead...
Fucking hell, he's been the DM of six different ministries since 2015... No wonder we keep receiving emails telling us a new DM is in charge, it's a game of musical chair!
I doubt the people that care about people working from home are the same that care about emissions
Are you implying people who dont want to sit in 2 hours of traffic and would prefer to spend that time with their family are somehow unconcerned about polluting the environment for future generations?
I've said the exact opposite of that. Profit driven business owners aren't concerned about emissions, is what I said.
I work for a city that constantly preaches sustainability, sends the mayor and council people to climate conferences, and is even buying fleets of electric vehicles for city use.
But we office workers (engineers, attorneys, accountants, HR, etc) have to work in office 5 days a week. Why? Because the city wants to encourage in office work because they decided to raise most of their revenue through local income taxes, which mostly hits commuters from the suburbs.
Of course, most companies don’t care about the example the city sets. If anything, the 2.5% tax is a massive incentive to keep working from home.
Sounds just like my city (Calgary, Canada). Exact same culture and tax problem too, but here it's mostly oil and gas companies, so they don't give a shit about the environment, they just want to justify their real estate holdings downtown. Which in itself is just a big circlejerk between a bunch of oil drenched executive. Definitely goes against the mayor and council, who declared a climate emergency and there's a bunch of ESG initiatives underway.
I found myself a remote job, and thankfully it's still remote. I make way more than I did downtown too, with none of the overhead (parking, food, years off my life spent commuting).
New office buildings will be like new malls or new nuclear power plants. No one will want to build them, since businesses know WFH is cheaper. Just right now, they have a lease and they have to keep up the act but as soon as they can, they will cash out. After a generation, population growth will be enough to get the reduced office use back up to full, and then the people of this generation will swoop in with a office downsizing buzzword trend that will make "de-office-ing" the rad new thing once the leases terms are up and the company stands to SAVE money.
We won't be seeing population growth, partially why the economy is going to be getting progressively worse over the next few years
These companies are paying (now even more) out the ass for leases and property maintenance. It also harms adjacent businesses (like restaurants) placed specifically in complexes with other businesses. I’ve seen it in person, a mom and pop dumpling restaurant was booming pre-pandemic and now only does sustainable levels of revenue on the days that the nextdoor offices require people to come in.
On a micro/personal level I love wfh. If everyone was 80-100% wfh that might solve the insane housing cost crisis we’re in. Buy a home in montana and work for a company in northern virginia for example.
On a macro level I can see the concerns. WFH is the future but these businesses needed a period of time to phase into it. This particular economic climate is NOT conducive to a harmless transition in many cases.
Damn I guess I'm not supporting the ma-and-pa places next to my apartment when I eat there literally 7 days a week. Time to go back into the office for this bullshit argument
I’m just talking about what I have seen personally.. the only argument I made is FOR wfh or did you not read that part
We should already have mixed used spaces instead of the nightmare of "homes over there, fun over there, work over there"
We did. If you look at aerial photos of American cities, they were built mixed use until the early 1900s. Between 1900 and 1970 you can watch as those mixed use buildings got demolished, and 75% of our city spaces got paved into parking lots. The song was serious. They paved paradise, and put up a parking lot.
The oil and auto companies enslaved the entire country.
Hence the movement of converting business zoning to residential homes is required in the transition. Its one of the best ways to avoid nimbys stopping the construction (as the building already exists) and increase practical housing, and reintroduce people back into its local economy.
Montana's COL is absolutely buttfucked right now, sadly. Most of the natives are being priced out of their own towns. If you ask them they'll blame rich californians/people buying summer homes up here alongside a sprinkle of bonus hostility. Like, rent here is insane. Like east coast city insane. In my field at least, remote positions are slim to none. Gonna have to be in-office. If you do move out here and snag a good remote job, though, bring a good coat and hit me up, lol
Looked into moving there close to after everything opened up. Yeah...those prices are astronomical.
There are alternatives to driving your car everywhere and there are objective environmental benefits to centralising human efforts for around 8hrs/day.
I'm not a fan of demanding people go back to the office, but this meme is idiotic. Get out of your fucking car.
Edit: the responses to this are exactly what I expected: pleas of helplessness rooted in a lack of imagination.
Nearly every city (yes, even those in the US) where you see these ridiculous commutes has options for transit and even cycling. The trick is that you have to live closer to the centre. You can't live in a suburb 2hrs away. You sell your car and you move closer to work.
This "oh everything is built for cars!" refrain is true enough, but only because so many people have chosen to live under that system.
"I can't afford rent in the city!" is what comes next. Have you considered how much money you save not having a car?. I've read estimates of roughly $10,000 every year. Living in Ottawa, I did the math and ditched my car in 2001. I later lived in Toronto, Vancouver, Amsterdam, London, and Cambridge, all car-free.
Sure for some it's just not possible, but for most it's a refusal to imagine a world where you don't own a car... and that's on you.
If we weren't de facto forced into owning and using a car due to our car centric city planning, maybe you'd have a point.
But as it stands bike infrastructure is non existent in most cities, public transportation is a joke, there is no mixed use zoning, etc.
In the winter, I emit more when I WFH.
At the office, I don't need to heat my house. And my bike+train commute emits very little.
Great point, because the energy used to heat your office and power your train are imaginary
It's economy of scale. A centralized building can be much more efficient than many individual houses. Big emphasis on CAN.
It all depends on how wasteful people are at home, wether they commute by train or bike (or how much car trips they do while WFH), and how responsible the office is managed.
The last studies I saw posted in Lemmy about this highlighted the nuance, while people jumped on the maximum possible saving as if that was real.
I think you underestimate how much energy most commercial offices / buildings use compared to a house.
Presumably your house is not just a giant glass box though. If that office was not built and not heated it would offset your house Heating as well as everyone else's.
Obviously not all offices are skyscrapers, but the ones that are are insanely wasteful. Fun fact Heating and Cooling to Greenhouse is expensive and that's what skyscrapers are giant greenhouses they are wildly inefficient. And there are definitely tons of Industry that we just shove and to skyscrapers for literally no reason that they could be done from home without any change in workflow other than the lack of a commute
Ah. This is a simple mistake.
You seem to think that corporate owners of commercial properties switch off the lights, heating and/or AC when they're empty.
In reality they leave them on even in empty properties, then lecture the rest of us about how it's our fault the climate is fucked because we forgot to unplug a 12 volt phone charger or flushed the toilet twice.
On a related note, remember that time you put the lid of a cola bottle in the wrong recycling bin? Clearly you're a hypocrite and in no position to suggest a factory dumping 12 tonnes of microplastics in a river is bad.
This is the answer, I work in a corporate office that is heated regardless of whether I am present or not.
But to be fair, the office is never empty during office hours, so it's not like an individual working from home would allow them to turn off the heat.
If working from home was standard, there'd be less need for offices, and less, smaller, offices would exist. Leading to less energy wasted in heating offices (as well as .kre space for residential).
Honestly fuck the downvotes, this shit ain’t our fault anyways. Tired of being told that it’s our job to fix the climate instead of the corporations that continue to make billions off of destroying it
JuSt DOnT bUy FRoM tHEm!
That’s not a feasible option when our society has been set up so that not giving a shit about other people or the environment makes you tons of money.
while there is indeed no ethical consumption under capitalism, at this point it’s unrealistic to not participate in it
Do you really turn your heat down a statistically significant amount for 8-10 hours a day when you are away from home?
Yes, I do. It saves easily 50 kWh of natural gas consumption per day.
On the days nobody will be home, we just let the thermostaat on 13 degrees Celsius for the whole day. When we are home it's 18 degrees during the day.
Assuming you are coming home every evening and not living in a really cold area, your house must be badly isolated if it cools down so significantly during the day.
It's reasonably insulated - above average for my location, but it does get cold in the winter.
Obviously, I'm only saving this heating fuel on the colder winter days.
I don't know about them specifically but my family generally did set the automatic timers on the thermostat. Down to 55 when no one was home back up to 68 slightly before people were supposed to be home
Your home is still heated to above freezing and your office is also heated. There's a net lose in HVAC requirements with WFH regardless.
