I love this story [1] of how folks in Jalandhar and north India were able to see the Himalayas for the first time in 30 years due to the lack of traffic pollution during the COVID lockdowns. It gives some hope as to what is possible.
Relatedly, I'd recommend watching the documentary The Year Earth Changed [2] which is about several environmental systems that recovered to some degree during COVID.
I don't think we should necessarily aim to restrict commuting to protect the environment, but now there's evidence that WFH + transitioning to cleaner energy sources can make a significant impact.
> able to see the Himalayas for the first time in 30 years due to the lack of traffic pollution
One though regarding this. I think complicated and expensive emission controls on cars became grudgingly acceptable because it reduced smog - which people can see.
I wonder if anything would have happened if smog wasn't visible. For example, I wonder if particulates might be worse than smog.
>became grudgingly acceptable because it reduced smog
as well as switching from leaded gasoline. within my lifetime we no longer hear about acid rain. it took a lot of convincing to make the switch to unleaded, but the results are obvious. CFCs from spray cans are also an example.
essentially, we've known for decades that emission controls can allow for the climate to repair itself. it just takes a lot of convincing to get people/industry to accept those changes. we didn't need a global pandemic. or did we? GenZ has no experience with the examples i mentioned, so maybe this was their version???
That region of Punjab (Doab region) and Himachal (Kangra Valley) is heavily industrialized.
When the COVID lockdowns in India kicked into enforcement, factories shut down, and millions of migrant workers from Eastern UP and Bihar left.
The area in the Doab and Kangra regions was better simply because factories shut down and haven't returned, fueling a localized recession that has resurrected the ghost of Khalistan, exacerbated the Heroin epidemic in the region, and further incentivized the (by Indian standards) highly educated and economically well off local population to emigrate to "Kaneda", "Noo Jeeland", and "Oostralia".
Hopefully with the massive $1.3 billion API/Pharmaceutial precursor industrial park the BJP and Congress Party are building together in that area [0] along with the high speed rail [1] making the commute time to Greater Chandigarh (the largest city and economy north of Delhi) and New Delhi doable within 1 hour and 2.5 hours respectively, we might see an economic recovery.
"Could" is a joke. Not commuting vs commuting with respect to its impact on the climate? The resources not spent by staying home are collectively enormous.
It’s probably not this simple. A lot of people commute by public transport (that’s running anyway or running on electric), walk, or bicycle. The world is a big place. Heating/cooling office buildings might be more efficient than everyone doing this to their homes. I don’t know one way or the other, likely neither do you. Making big pronouncements (or deciding huge societal norms like where work) because climate change is probably not a good idea.
"Ty Colman, a cofounder and the chief revenue officer at Optera, a carbon-accounting firm that helps organizations quantify their emissions, said that in general, a fully remote company with no offices has the lowest impact-per-employee per year, at less than 1 metric ton of carbon-dioxide equivalent. That includes the uptick in energy used to power computers, keep the lights on, and maintain a comfortable temperature at home."
(versus 1.4 tons for hybrid and 1.7 tons for full time in the office). There's quite a lot more about the effects on the environment in the article.
Various bodies that track worldwide congestion/traffic show traffic trending upwards for years now. Of course not counting the CoVid year(s) but afterwards, it has been on an upwards trend. Even in "less developed" areas in the Caribbean, Latin America and Africa the trends are to greater congestion and the associated lost time, deaths, increased pollution and lower quality of life.
You must not have heard how, apparently, most Americans do not turn off (or down) the heat / A/C when they're not home. It's pretty crazy yet is a real thing!
Even public transport can cut back schedules if there is that much less riding going on. While there's less to be saved there, we shouldn't act as if that's for free.
Heating/AC might be the only area where energy consumption isn't reduced by WFH.
If we don't decide social norms by what we consider to be pragmatism, how the hell do we decide them at all? I'm not a big believer in climate change, but when people are driving less, the price of gasoline tends to go down even as I need less of it myself. I can get behind that.
The idea that people must work in the office, even when no one can articulate why that's a good idea, is some obscure form of lunacy that is transmitted by being bitten by rabid upper management.
Ah, so every available inch of asphalt in every single freeway in LA being 100% occupied by personal cars at every hour of the day is just an illusion?
- public transport does not run "anyway". If no-one goes on a route, any sane transit system will schedule less frequent services
- heating a big building may be more efficient than a house, but isn't it really dumb to heat it efficiently if you don't have to heat it at all? It's not like people can switch off 100% of their home climate control when they go to the office. Likewise, the building is likely kept in a certain temperature range 24/7.
>Heating/cooling office buildings might be more efficient than everyone doing this to their homes
On the flipside, how many people even have climate-controlled homes year-round? When I used to live in California, air-conditioning was a rare and valuable treasure in a $3k/month apartment. I think I've heard euros claim they don't have air conditioning, too.
You are assuming that a fully remote worker stays in the same house as a commuter. Lots of HN posts say one of the benefits of remote work is that you can move anywhere and afford a nice big house on your engineer's salary. I would like to see a study on the average house size of commuters vs remote workers, but my gut says if people can work from anywhere, they would purchase bigger houses in cheaper location and increase their impact on the climate.
This is a good point but it makes you wonder - when the majority of the world’s population is urban, what percentage of them would move to rural areas if offered the choice?
What i see as more likely is people moving o suburbs. Suburbs, especially north american ones, are terrible for the environment and city finances.
At least in my local bubble in NYC, people working from home as consuming more fossil fuels. They're moving to the suburbs, buying a car, or flying around the world as digital nomads. Obviously, it's not representative most office workers who already live in the suburbs.
If I commute to the office, I need to heat the office and my apartment so it's not freezing when I return. If I work from home, I just need to heat my tiny home. And I pay for all the electricity so I care about waste. And there's no commuting, no lunch rush hour, and other car related emissions
WFH is here to stay. If you look at which companies are mandating office returns it’s the large and old incumbents. The young companies and startups are investing in remote and global workforces. In a few decades time these companies will replace the dinosaurs of today. There is reason to be optimistic about long term remote work.
Correct take, Infact I would argue enforcing work in the office probably accelerates the current tech oligopoly guard in their transformation into IBM like businesses
I really hope so. I also hope that we have better tools for remote collaboration in the future. IMO (I've worked remotely for well over a decade) the current stack of Zoom/Teams/Slack/Meet/Whatever are also dinosaurs that need to go extinct.
Well this is just narrow thinking. We'll gain more noise, distractions and busybody managers coming by to interrupt us every 30 minutes to ask for status updates. And also individually wrapped tiny portions of snacks.
More like boomer bosses taking full volume phone calls in cube farms, people eating stinky lunches, zero privacy, and high anxiety as a function of feeling the need to 'look busy'
Oh but it does require liftestlye changes. You'll have to spend more money on "green" cars. Instead of you know, not spending any money since WFH means you dont need a car.
I'm sorry but I hate this type of argument. There are different people saying different things but you conflate them all together and say "they" are telling you contradictory things. It makes no sense.
WFH has so many benefits, whoever mandated it during COVID deserves Noble Peace Prize for the work towards wellbeeing of humanity.
RTO is pretty much incompatible with having a family.
At the end of the day you lost up to 4h of your time and you paid for it
- 1.5h commute
- 0.25-0.5h getting presentable
- 1h lunch
- 1h total in many small bits getting the dishwasher / dryer / washer running
Were either in a climate crisis and wfh needs to be the new norm where possible or everything is window dressing. We should be taxing office space to account for the additional pollution
We're in the kind of climate crisis that requires you to stop flying back home to see your family at thanksgiving and using your air conditioner, but also requires you to spend a couple of hours a day driving in stop and go traffic.
Readit News
Relatedly, I'd recommend watching the documentary The Year Earth Changed [2] which is about several environmental systems that recovered to some degree during COVID.
I don't think we should necessarily aim to restrict commuting to protect the environment, but now there's evidence that WFH + transitioning to cleaner energy sources can make a significant impact.
[1] https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/himalayas-visible-lockdow...
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XswV_yqPq28
One though regarding this. I think complicated and expensive emission controls on cars became grudgingly acceptable because it reduced smog - which people can see.
I wonder if anything would have happened if smog wasn't visible. For example, I wonder if particulates might be worse than smog.
as well as switching from leaded gasoline. within my lifetime we no longer hear about acid rain. it took a lot of convincing to make the switch to unleaded, but the results are obvious. CFCs from spray cans are also an example.
essentially, we've known for decades that emission controls can allow for the climate to repair itself. it just takes a lot of convincing to get people/industry to accept those changes. we didn't need a global pandemic. or did we? GenZ has no experience with the examples i mentioned, so maybe this was their version???
When the COVID lockdowns in India kicked into enforcement, factories shut down, and millions of migrant workers from Eastern UP and Bihar left.
The area in the Doab and Kangra regions was better simply because factories shut down and haven't returned, fueling a localized recession that has resurrected the ghost of Khalistan, exacerbated the Heroin epidemic in the region, and further incentivized the (by Indian standards) highly educated and economically well off local population to emigrate to "Kaneda", "Noo Jeeland", and "Oostralia".
Hopefully with the massive $1.3 billion API/Pharmaceutial precursor industrial park the BJP and Congress Party are building together in that area [0] along with the high speed rail [1] making the commute time to Greater Chandigarh (the largest city and economy north of Delhi) and New Delhi doable within 1 hour and 2.5 hours respectively, we might see an economic recovery.
Source: extended family live in the region
[0] - https://www.outlookindia.com/outlook-spotlight/department-of...
[1] - https://m.tribuneindia.com/news/himachal/new-delhi-una-vande...
"Ty Colman, a cofounder and the chief revenue officer at Optera, a carbon-accounting firm that helps organizations quantify their emissions, said that in general, a fully remote company with no offices has the lowest impact-per-employee per year, at less than 1 metric ton of carbon-dioxide equivalent. That includes the uptick in energy used to power computers, keep the lights on, and maintain a comfortable temperature at home."
(versus 1.4 tons for hybrid and 1.7 tons for full time in the office). There's quite a lot more about the effects on the environment in the article.
https://inrix.com/blog/2022-traffic-scorecard/
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/sep/15/road-con...
https://www.itdp.org/2021/03/22/the-next-pandemic-surge-traf...
Do you think people riding public transit pollute more or less than people who don't commute at all?
Heating/AC might be the only area where energy consumption isn't reduced by WFH.
If we don't decide social norms by what we consider to be pragmatism, how the hell do we decide them at all? I'm not a big believer in climate change, but when people are driving less, the price of gasoline tends to go down even as I need less of it myself. I can get behind that.
The idea that people must work in the office, even when no one can articulate why that's a good idea, is some obscure form of lunacy that is transmitted by being bitten by rabid upper management.
- public transport does not run "anyway". If no-one goes on a route, any sane transit system will schedule less frequent services
- heating a big building may be more efficient than a house, but isn't it really dumb to heat it efficiently if you don't have to heat it at all? It's not like people can switch off 100% of their home climate control when they go to the office. Likewise, the building is likely kept in a certain temperature range 24/7.
On the flipside, how many people even have climate-controlled homes year-round? When I used to live in California, air-conditioning was a rare and valuable treasure in a $3k/month apartment. I think I've heard euros claim they don't have air conditioning, too.
Basic physics shows that energy = force * distance = mass * acceleration * distance.
So moving more mass, further distances uses more energy than not, especially via the personal cars that are used in the US.
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That might be true but doesn’t this assume that people stop heating/cooling their homes whilst they are at work?
What i see as more likely is people moving o suburbs. Suburbs, especially north american ones, are terrible for the environment and city finances.
Deleted Comment
Dead Comment
More like boomer bosses taking full volume phone calls in cube farms, people eating stinky lunches, zero privacy, and high anxiety as a function of feeling the need to 'look busy'
> Road traffic crashes are a leading cause of death in the United States for people ages 1–54
https://www.cdc.gov/injury/features/global-road-safety/index...
RTO is pretty much incompatible with having a family.
At the end of the day you lost up to 4h of your time and you paid for it - 1.5h commute - 0.25-0.5h getting presentable - 1h lunch - 1h total in many small bits getting the dishwasher / dryer / washer running