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this post was submitted on 01 Dec 2023
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What gets me is that in this mad dash to address climate change, WFH is a valuable tool to reduce emissions from commuting. I remember driving during the early lockdowns and thinking it would be possible to skateboard down the freeway. You'd think Democrats would be encouraging WFH as a part of their green initiatives, but I can see that having donors in real estate and fossil fuels might run counter to that.
According to CNN, "passenger vehicles contribute 29% of total US greenhouse gas emissions," and I reckon the vast majority of that is probably from people commuting. If we could cut vehicle emissions by just 1/3 (number I pulled out of my ass) by having people work remote when they can, it would be a fucking massive 10% decrease in overall emissions.
I believe it. I had meant to say in the previous comment that during the initial lockdowns and driving on the empty freeways, the Southern California skies were the absolute clearest I had ever seen them. While I'm sure industry is the largest emissions contributor, factories and plants are localized, whereas cars are absolutely everywhere and a huge cause of general smog. It's bonkers that we have the means to reduce our emissions significantly by allowing and encouraging WFH, but muh profits and control.
I've been saying this forever. We don't need new tech to be developed or rolled out, we don't need to move everyone to a city and take a train, we don't need everyone to buy a new electric car, we just need to take away the reason 1/3 or more of driving occurs. And we already proved we can do it. It's insane to not make that part of the climate goals.
This compounds too - less traffic means less need to add more lanes, or run more trains, or pave more parking lots, etc... So basically "bad, unnecessary" construction can go away. From what I can tell, almost no one actually wants a larger highway except because of traffic. But most of the traffic is commuters. We might have enough capacity (if you remove most commuters) for a very very long time to handle tourists, delivery trucks, and emergency services...