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Dirty downside of 'return to office'; ending WFH could make climate crisis worse
- myshpa 3y agoOriginal title: Dirty downside of 'return to office' - Push to end work-from-home could make climate crisis worse
- mydriasis 3y ago"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.
- astrodust 3y agoWho knew millions of people not driving for hours every day could have a positive effect?
- basisword 3y agoIt’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.
- NickM 3y agoWell, I was with you until that last sentence.
- thatfrenchguy 3y agoYou 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!
- Der_Einzige 3y agoA lot of those Americans have pets. Many of those pets (i.e. a husky) need climate control 24/7.
- lostlogin 3y agoDo they though? If it’s hot, sure, but they seem able to tolerate temperatures of -50 centigrade, and sleep outside at the South Pole.
- goatlover 3y agoWhat pets can survive sleeping outside in Antartica?
- jenscow 3y agogoldfish?
- lostlogin 3y agoThe husky. They had kennels but they didn’t have doors or anything. They would nap in the snow and let it pile up to keep them warm. https://www.coolantarctica.com/Antarctica%20fact%20file/wildlife/dogs_huskies.php https://www.coolantarctica.com/Antarctica%20fact%20file/wild... https://www.alamy.com/stock-photo/hut-shackleton-antarctic.html?sortBy=relevant https://www.alamy.com/stock-photo/hut-shackleton-antarctic.h...
- drno123 3y agoSo to save environment we should ban pets
- ilyt 3y agoShooting you would be far preferable to getting rid of my pets.
- sigstoat 3y ago
- rwmj 3y agoIt says in the article: "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.
- NickM 3y agoI wonder if it also factors in travel for remote employees though. Every fully remote company I’ve ever worked for has had regular in-person meetups where people fly to some central location a few times a year.
- gruez 3y agoGiven that a one-way flight from seattle to san francisco generates ~0.1t of CO2, and a flight from new york generates around 0.35. One or two meetups can easily blow away those savings.
- jameshart 3y agoAnd every office-based company I've ever worked for has had regular travel to shuttle people between offices or send teams to offsites. I'm not sure there are massive differences in travel in remote companies - although maybe there should be.
- Wowfunhappy 3y agoI guess you've only worked for big companies. Smaller ones only have one office.
- jameshart 3y agoSmall companies are, indeed, small.
- itsoktocry 3y ago>A lot of people commute by public transport (that’s running anyway or running on electric), walk, or bicycle. Do you think people riding public transit pollute more or less than people who don't commute at all?
- gruez 3y agoThat's addressed in the sentence immediately following that quote >Heating/cooling office buildings might be more efficient than everyone doing this to their homes.
- postmodest 3y agoIt's almost as if the drive to end fossil fuel use and build vast mixed-use Arcologies at the end of the 70's were good ideas that conservative politicians overturned and here we are in the hell they made for us, trying to fend off their rabid supporters.
- goatlover 3y agoConservative politicians ended those in urban areas, which largely votes liberal? Is this US conservative or world-wide? Because the meaning of conservative varies.
- solarpunk 3y agopeople cool and heat their homes when they go home though.
- VectorLock 3y agoHeating and cooling office buildings AND heating and cooling homes is less efficient than just heating and cooling homes. Many people aren't stopping heating/cooling their homes when they leave, or just reduce it, or don't do it at all since there are still other people in the home.
- thefz 3y agoIDK about you, but in temperate middle Europe if you don't heat your house at least some when it's empty, Oct-Apr, you are going to spend way more to get it at 19-20°C when you come back. Not to mention the pipes risk exploding if you let it go close 0°.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- snickerbockers 3y ago>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.
- vladvasiliu 3y ago> I think I've heard euros claim they don't have air conditioning, too. This. I don't know about Italy, Spain, and the like, but here in Paris, people mostly don't have A/C in their homes, but basically every office does. So yeah, carting people to the office and back consumes energy, then you have to consume some more to keep them cool. Bonus points for an impossible number of people burning gas in their cars while waiting around on gridlocked highways and polluting the air. At least public transit uses (mostly) nuclear power here.
- btilly 3y agoDepends where you live. In Southern California, air conditioning is extremely common. Either central or window units. Go up to the Bay area, and I'd think it was fairly rare.
- dragonwriter 3y ago> When I used to live in California, air-conditioning was a rare and valuable treasure in a $3k/month apartment. In the mild climates of the Bay Area and similar places, sure, but not, at least in the last half century or so, in the LA Basin and the Central Valley.
- Solvency 3y agoAh, 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?
- NoMoreNicksLeft 3y agoEven 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.
- jwells89 3y agoThe other thing about public transport is that it is, generally speaking, more practical to switch to renewable power. Yes there's plenty of red tape to wade through to get any kind of infrastructure work done, but even factoring that in, a project like converting a commuter rail network to solar-powered electric is achievable on a dramatically shorter timetable than elimination of fossil-fueled cars and trucks. So while the impact of a public transport user is higher than someone staying at home, it's still smaller than that of someone driving to work each day and has greater potential for being shrunk in short order.
- NoMoreNicksLeft 3y agoEven renewable power isn't magical. When they switch buses or trains over to electric, they have to build a new vehicle... the processes of manufacturing them aren't 100% renewable. No one's exactly making renewable steel. When they have to repair a road for the buses to ride around on, that concrete puts CO2 in the air as well. If they need fewer because of WFH, they build fewer. WFH is a net win, if you care about this stuff. And, it turns out, it's a net win even if you don't. Might want to pull your money out of commercial real estate if you have any of that though.
- jwells89 3y agoOf course, it's part of why I'm a big proponent of WFH. There will always be some number of people who can't do that though, and so I think it's also important to shrink public transit footprints as much as practically possible.
- lotsofpulp 3y ago> I don’t know one way or the other, likely neither do you. 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.
- alphaomegacode 3y agoVarious 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. https://inrix.com/blog/2022-traffic-scorecard/ https://inrix.com/blog/2022-traffic-scorecard/ https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/sep/15/road-congestion-levels-in-outer-london-higher-than-before-lockdown https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/sep/15/road-con... https://www.itdp.org/2021/03/22/the-next-pandemic-surge-traffic/ https://www.itdp.org/2021/03/22/the-next-pandemic-surge-traf...
- whycombagator 3y ago> Heating/cooling office buildings might be more efficient than everyone doing this to their homes That might be true but doesn’t this assume that people stop heating/cooling their homes whilst they are at work?
- tcfunk 3y agoDo people actually stop heating/cooling their homes while at work?
- gambiting 3y agoDo people not??
- tcfunk 3y agoDefinitely not. And even less so during winter months I would guess. Add to that many apartment buildings share utility cost across the unit so there’s even less incentive.
- the_only_law 3y agoI used to, but I got sick of coming home mentally exhausted, just to get to “rest” in a 90 degree room.
- FredPret 3y agoThis fundamentally does not make sense. - 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.
- Aunche 3y agoAt 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.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- ilyt 3y agoPutting solar on home can at least offset part of that usage.
- thefz 3y agoIf 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
- RestlessMind 3y agoYou 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.
- eldaisfish 3y agoThis 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.
- RestlessMind 3y agoAgreed. In fact now that I am trying hard to recollect posts describing an ideal remote work setup, every single one of them advocated for a separate room for your home-office.
- commandlinefan 3y agoBut on the plus side, we'll gain absolutely nothing at all.
- sixstringtheory 3y agoWell 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.
- karaterobot 3y agoWait wait wait, you forgot about spontaneous collaboration
- tuckerpo 3y ago'Serendipitous innovation!' 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'
- highwayman47 3y agoSuddenly climate change doesn’t require lifestyle changes when it’s time for the plebeians to get back to the office.
- downWidOutaFite 3y agoI'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.
- gumballindie 3y agoOh 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.
- isykt 3y ago… in the US you definitely need a car to do everything else. Unless you live in NYC.
- gumballindie 3y agoWhere I live in the UK taking the bus from my town to a town 2 miles away is a 40 minute journey. In London, taking public transport means massively dense crowds. The city is still choked with traffic. Seriosuly, we have to move away from the mindset of uber dense cities to a more sparse living style. Everything in between filled with trees and vegetation. We built all this tech so that customers can shop remotely, I dont see why workers couln't work from their homes too.
- FredPret 3y agoHonestly, public transport can be an immense pain, even in cities that are famous for having good systems. Only the most common use-cases are catered for in a reasonable way. As soon as you take a journey that's an edge-case in any way, get ready for major discomfort. Furniture shopping, major grocery shops, moving house, going from one out-of-the-way place to another, travelling at an odd time.
- sshine 3y agoMost things make the environment worse. Kids are the worst. Even the environment seems to have a negative effect on itself once the ball starts rolling.
- FiniteField 3y agoTo add onto this comment, saying "having children is the worst thing for the climate" is a totally defeatist attitude towards the issue. What people are saying is "human life is incompatible with the Earth so we should stop perpetuating it". We might as well count our living selves alongside hypothetical future children and all kill ourselves now if that's the case. Of course, the people espousing this message are pretty much exclusively talking to western/European people, who are in almost all cases already giving birth at far below-replacement levels.
- convolvatron 3y agonone of these arguments are useful if they are all phrased in terms of two absolutes. we could clearly chart a middle course between breeding as much as possible and lying down and dying. ignoring our apparent inability to do anything at all about anything of course
- antisthenes 3y ago> none of these arguments are useful if they are all phrased in terms of two absolutes. we could clearly chart a middle course between breeding as much as possible and lying down and dying. That's also primarily an American issue. They tend to view everything through the lens of 2 political camps and "whose side are you on?". That kind of view is completely antithetical to actually solving problems.
- ilyt 3y agoAnd makes any discussion absolutely obnoxious with the usual "if you don't agree you must be on the other side and be the enemy"
- zwieback 3y agoLots of variables - where I live there are no traffic jams and I commute by bike. For suburbanites calculating the tradeoff between traffic and heating/cooling individual residences is pretty complex. Similar to what I call the "farmer's market illusion": industrially grown produce may well be better for the planet.
- CatWChainsaw 3y agoScrew the planet, think of the shareholders and all the money they're not making because no one wants vacant office real estate.
- ipnon 3y agoWFH 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.
- api 3y agoFor young companies offering WFH is one of numerous ways to be competitive in the job market with large old incumbents.
- Kareem71 3y agoCorrect take, Infact I would argue enforcing work in the office probably accelerates the current tech oligopoly guard in their transformation into IBM like businesses
- someone321 3y ago[dead]
- the_jeremy 3y agoI mean, their stock has tanked by >50% since IPO, so not sure about "just fine".
- adoxyz 3y agomost tech stocks have tanked compared to 2021 all time highs.
- geodel 3y agoWell, I heard they have also raised the service price > 50%. Maybe it will balance out. Specially with current deskilling movement in industry where every little service and tools have to be 3rd party SAAS, people may just be forced to use Github and the likes.
- CameronNemo 3y ago
- karaterobot 3y agoAgreed. If WFH reduced total vehicle miles by a significant amount, then according to my calculations, RTO should increase total vehicle miles by a significant amount. Check my work!
- ipaddr 3y agoWere 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
- commandlinefan 3y agoWe'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.
- akomtu 3y agoLooks like we are stuck with the insane officers on our submarine, who demand restarting the reactor, which is known for leaking poisonous gases and they dismiss all objections from the crew because their personal rooms are sealed better.
- austinl 3y agoI 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. [1] https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/himalayas-visible-lockdown-india-scli-intl/index.html https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/himalayas-visible-lockdow... [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XswV_yqPq28 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XswV_yqPq28
- geodel 3y agoIt reminds of joke around that time: The air is so clear nowadays that one can even see their dark future clearly
- HelloMcFly 3y agoI want to watch that show "The Year Earth Changed" but I'm afraid it will just make me so sad.
- m463 3y ago> 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.
- deepsun 3y agoFeynman wrote that in 70s, before emissions control, he could barely breathe in Pasadena, near Los Angeles. The smog burned the throat and eyes.
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- Cypher 3y agoI'm not convinced, although I like working from home. I think human impact on the environment isn't as big deal. The doomers have been calling for the end of the climate for decades and been wrong everytime but they don't change their outlook they just move the clock forward another 5-10 years.
- drno123 3y agoWhat percentage od the total workforce can actually work from home? Construction workers, doctors, nurses, teachers, shop salespersons, waiters… I expect these jobs are the majority od the workforce? Not everyone is in IT so that it is easy to transfer to WFH
- bblb 3y agoIT is ~2% of the US workforce. 'Professional and business services' at 14% might be a target for work from home? https://www.bls.gov/emp/tables/employment-by-major-industry-sector.htm https://www.bls.gov/emp/tables/employment-by-major-industry-...
- 01100011 3y agoOr it slowly goads people back into cities with efficient transportation networks. I've been saying the following for a couple years now: If you believe governments believe climate change is real(and I phrase it this way to avoid debating people on the reality of AGW), then you accept that incentives will align to reduce energy usage(assuming no mass carbon neutral energy on the horizon, which I believe is a safe assumption) and goad the population away from inefficent suburbs/exburbs and back into higher density urban environments. And I say this as a lover of suburbia who generally hates urban areas(save Tokyo, which is wonderful).
- btilly 3y agoNobody will be goaded unless a lot of housing is built there. Hard to move to a place with no place to live. There are a lot of political barriers to that throughout the West.
- 01100011 3y agoThe multifamily market is different from the single-family home market. Lots of MFH going in lately. But I'm not saying that people will move into the existing cities. I'm only contending that folks will be forced into denser, urban environments and those may be built in previously suburban/rural areas or maybe existing cities. The incentives are coming though.
- btilly 3y agoThe problem is that NIMBY folks have the ability to block multifamily in California almost indefinitely. And often do. The cities where they most efficiently bock it are the ones with most of the offices, because local government collects more taxes over time with offices than housing. This is a result of https://www.nber.org/digest/apr05/lock-effect-californias-proposition-13 https://www.nber.org/digest/apr05/lock-effect-californias-pr.... The result? California is about 3-4 million housing units short of what it needs. And it is getting steadily worse. There is no prospect of this changing any time soon: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_housing_shortage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_housing_shortage When it comes to rent, we're boiling the frog. And the frog is already well-cooked.
- consumer451 3y agoA much more immediate reason to stick with WFH, in the mass transit averse USA at least: > 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.html https://www.cdc.gov/injury/features/global-road-safety/index...
- wschfdkbrmcdf 3y agoAh yes, the "climate emergency". Aka total bullshit cooked up by the Malthusians in charge of UNESCO etc in order to control the sheep
- faeriechangling 3y agoMake employers liable for the fuel costs of an average commute for the region then so they can face the pinch of carbon taxes. Give them a rebate for every day out of the office. The way we have things arranged now, those with the authority to determine how much carbon does or doesn't get used are not the same people who actually pay carbon taxes.
- FredPret 3y agoWhy? Just add the tax onto the fuel. Employees aren't dumb - they know commuting costs time and money. So on-location employers will have to offer more money / struggle to recruit. The office-heads have to adapt or die. Perfect.
- bruce343434 3y agoIt seems like a large percentage of the United States population is not in a position to negotiate. If noise that living is literally unaffordable is everywhere, and people are racking up credit card debt to buy groceries, they're not suddenly going to get a higher wage when fuel prices rise yet again.
- ChatGTP 3y agoI guess it could be worse but it’s pretty fucking bad already ?
- shahbaby 3y agoBusinesses influenced politicians to force workers back into the office. We as workers should form some sort of collective union to push back against these policies. All employees are replaceable. If we don't fight back now then we will ultimately go back to where we were pre-pandemic.
- paulus_magnus2 3y agoWFH 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
- ThomPete 3y agoI hope no one takes this kind of junk science seriously. "could" is typical for wild speculation and at attempts at news-making rather than news-reporting. Other words in that category "might, potentially, risks" There is no climate crisis. The climate is changing, we will adapt. It's that simple.
- mbfg 3y agoShe had a remote position over the past few years, but landed a new job in February at a nonprofit, which came with a catch: The job required her to make the hike to its Silver Spring, Maryland, ---------------------------------------------- Rachel, who was granted a pseudonym to speak freely about her employer's policy, ---------------------------------------------- Let's hope the first sentence is obfuscated too, otherwise, the pseudonym probably isn't going to help.
- archo 3y agohttps://archive.is/25eSJ https://archive.is/25eSJ
- mike503 3y agoIf the work could survive the pandemic remotely it can survive now. RTO is bs and just a management initiative to try to maintain some sort of control. Management and its need to maintain relevancy is the bigger issue to me here.
- ldehaan 3y ago[dead]