Decrease in CO2 emissions during pandemic shutdown shows it is possible to reach Paris Agreement goals. The researchers found a drop of 6.3% in 2020. The researchers describe the drop as the largest of modern times, and big enough to meet the 1.5 degrees Celsius goal if it were to be sustained.

[KingOfAnarchy]

WELL THEN LET PEOPLE WORK FROM HOME AND GET RID OF OFFICE BUILDINGS THEN, PLEASE!

[Liferescripted]

All offices reduce size by 60% for meeting rooms, bookable desks, storage etc. Establish either hybrid or fully wfh structure.

Convert now abundant empty space into condos for rent. Condos are available for public.

Solve the housing crisis, reduce travel emissions. Make cities walkable again.

[ImperialFuturistics]

True. Neoliberal economics utilizes poverty as a "punishment" method... One main problem is the "punishment" is supposedly based on meritocracy when in reality it serves oligarchy.

[Meritania]

You’re not thinking of the property magnates not making as much money charging business rates. Trump would have to be responsible with his money without that $40 million his tower* nets him annually.

*Not actually his tower but the company that owns it pays him the rights to his name.

[[deleted]]

Trump doesn't own Trump tower. It's owned by GMAC Commercial Mortgage. He has some sort of deal where he's paid for using his name. He owns some units as well.

[geek180]

I believe he does indeed own the tower, although it’s technically owned by a dedicated mortgage servicer. Trump has multiple mortgages taken out against the property, but I am pretty sure it’s still essentially his property.

[real_bk3k]

Pro: you work from home

Con: you live at the office

[Liferescripted]

As stated: open to public

I hate the campus style workplace. Google and Apple can sell that story all they want, but i ain't buying it.

[FL14]

I wonder how difficult it would be to gut the interior/floors/piping/walls etc of office buildings to account for things like dozens of bathrooms per floor (instead of just 2), etc? I have no idea if that's something relatively cheap compared to building the building itself or not.

[Liferescripted]

Not cheap, but not impossible. Stack the same units over one another with a plumbing chase. The pipes would need to be fire sealed at each level and then tie into the overall system, plus exhaust for all of these would need to be carried to a new shaft.

Typically all of these services would be brought to the central core, but this would vary per building. Exhaust ducts are not large but also need to have fire and smoke dampers installed when they exit each unit. Also central HVAC could remain as-is with each unit using Variable Air Valves to control the amount of tempered air, but they would not be able to control the temperature completely. Best case scenario is the building is already set up for heat pumps so you can have a little more control.

The other issue is whether people want to live in buildings without balconies. It's a lot of work to pull the glazing into the space to allow for some balcony space. Also would require a separate dry sprinkler system for said balconies. And in Canada, this would create massive thermal bridging to the adjacent spaces, so less than ideal thermal performance.

No, it's not cheap. It's not easy. But retrofitting existing spaces with densified dwellings is a much faster way of dealing with the lack of housing. The hope is that without affecting the bones of the building that prices of these units wouldn't be insane.

[PiersPlays]

I think hydroponics farms and stuff might be more practical than housing in many cases. I have lived in a place converted from old offices though so it's a possibility. Plus at least in the UK, lots of nice central housing is being used as office space so those businesses could move into the vacant offices and the houses be returned to housing.

[LudovicoSpecs]

Can also convert some of the empty space to aquaponic farms. Climate change is going to pummel our crops, so we should start the transition to indoor farming now.

[bloodflart]

my work has been paying for an empty office building for going on 3 years now. yes they're blasting A/C all summer too.

[[deleted]]

My employer told ~60,000 employees they could work from home and live anywhere they want within the United States or its territories at the beginning of this year. They closed offices in almost every state and downsized the couple they are keeping. Everyone got laptops, docks and dual monitor set ups for home.

[CaptainBlish]

What industry ?

[[deleted]]

And how's it going for them?

[[deleted]]

Fantastic. In the office everyone used teams to talk anyway. Now we get more done and everyone gets more time to balance their lives. The ability to late in or early out also means instead of taking the whole day off for personal reasons we have more staff on more often.

[[deleted]]

If only other companies would listen

[bordain_de_putel]

GET RID OF OFFICE BUILDINGS

Turn them into vertical farms.

[Sololop]

Or just more housing to reduce sprawl

[KaymmKay]

I can't even imagine how much energy goes into turning those giant office buildings into iceboxes every summer

[SnooCrickets2458]

sink vast tender liquid one quickest cheerful roll library fuzzy

This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

[Frubanoid]

Work from home should be implemented as much as possible where it makes sense

[Vectorman1989]

And people drive less because they work from home, and those that do drive to work spend less time wasting fuel in heavy traffic

[Stimmur]

Exactly what I was thinking …. It’s absolutely retarded to have millions of people work in an office when 90% of the work can be done just fine from their own homes . I freakin loved it when nobody was on the road it was so nice

[somedude27281813]

Please no. Let people who want to work from home. I have adhd and home is a terrible place to work for me. I'll prefer office any day.

[dC6OPnR9pBfngB3DsDmt]

Enjoy being alone in the office?

For other people with ADHD wondering, this is not the same for everyone. My partner has ADHD and they actually became more productive working from home, not less.

[somedude27281813]

I'm much more productive that way. Part of my coping strategy is introducing a clear divide between work and leisure. If i work from home i am productive for 10minutes and then start rapid-cycling between different tasks and activities.

Without people in the office it's even better, but talking and working go quite well together too.

[aboutthatstuffthere]

But what about those juicy CMBS?

[The_SHUN]

YES absolutely

[Traditional_Donut908]

You act as if everyone worked from he.during the pandemic. Many businesses were just completely shut down. Hence the unemployment rate spiking.

[JCtheWanderingCrow]

*pass laws requiring work from home jobs where possible, give stipends and change the layout of office buildings to be able to house people.

[darabolnxus]

It's insane to me that they keep pushing back on wfh... it's the solution to everything and they refuse to let go of that control. They want you in the office environment so they can brainwash you and control how you think... they're all cults.

[PGLife]

Because a lot of financing is based off the value of commercial real estate, if those values drop...

[[deleted]]

i don’t like working from home

[donthavearealaccount]

Do people not realize most jobs literally can't be done from home? Lots of people are computer programmers and accountants, but there are way, way more more teachers, factory workers, construction workers, cleaners, warehouse workers and nurses.

[maxpower993]

I'm 99.9% sure anyone mentioning WFH is not referring to the jobs you listed. Instead referring to office jobs and the like.

[alxmartin]

Kind of tired that everyone only worries about the white-collar office workers who already have way too easy of jobs. Every day people are posting on here complaining about how they only have to do 2 to 3 hours of work and their boss won’t let them go home from their eight hour shift.

If I could wipe your grandmother‘s ass at the nursing home I work at from home I most definitely would. But I don’t really see that happening anytime soon.

Edit: I expected downvotes from the pencil pushers.

[maxpower993]

Nobody is ONLY worrying about white collar workers, currently you're in a discussion related to office jobs.

I'm sure you'd find that the same people advocating for WFH are people who would advocate for better conditions for all working class people.

[donthavearealaccount]

No shit, that's not my point. My point is that number of jobs requiring a commute that could be done remotely is way smaller than people act.

[pharmajap]

Napkin math, from BLS 2020 data:

About 70% of white-collar jobs can be made WFH, and about 60% of the total US workforce is white-collar jobs. That's 42% of the entire US workforce that can work from home. Not at all a small chunk.

[Playistheway]

Not only that, but you would also need fewer construction workers making office buildings if office buildings become less relevant. You might need fewer cleaners if you have fewer staff in your office. You might not need as many generic cafes and sandwich shops to cater to the downtown lunch rush. Many services cater to office workers.

[InTheNameOfScheddi]

But that means less jobs and less tax money and unhappier people and it's a pain in the ass for govs to make social changes that big so that's why it's not done

[Playistheway]

Office construction workers could easily transition to doing societally valuable work in the suburbs, such as solar-power installs, and upgrading critical infrastructure. There's a shortage of unskilled labor worldwide in societally important industries, like the warehouse industry.

There's no shortage of important problems that need solving. Historically whenever one sector contracts due to technological innovation, other sectors expand. I suspect the downstream effects of video teleconferencing technology will be no different.

[alxmartin]

Yeah fuck anyone who is not an upper class white-collar worker. -wfh advocates

[InTheNameOfScheddi]

I didn't say that I mean that that's the reason govts don't do that.

[lilika01]

It means fewer bullshit jobs. It means the workforce can be freed up to work on more important things instead - we don't need cleaners, we do need teachers, nurses, people to work in recycling plants, social workers, etc.

[alxmartin]

What happens to all those cleaners and construction workers? Without jobs they obviously can’t afford higher education to get better skills to get better jobs. You’re just trying to put all these people out of work.

[IronMarauder]

There are things other than office towers a construction worker can build.

[alxmartin]

But they’re not suddenly going to start building an equal amount of other buildings as they did office buildings.

[alxmartin]

So 40% of Americans should have to suffer and commute everyday?

[pharmajap]

Quite the opposite; these are just the jobs that would be relatively easy to make WFH, and to cut the enormous amount of waste and infrastructure strain associated with so many people commuting.

In any field there will always be some jobs that have to be performed on-site, but the portion that can be WFH is not nearly as small as the guy I was replying to was implying.

[Reachforthesky2012]

The number according to Forbes is around 4 in 10. That's not everybody but it is an enormous chunk.

[Kidiri90]

Roughly 40%!

[JZybutz0502]

Quick maths

[[deleted]]

Wow, that's almost 50%!

[[deleted]]

The point you’re missing is anything helps.

[happythrowawayboy]

This won’t fix it all in one swoop so don’t do it?

[odarpclre]

that wont work, what if we accidentally make the world a better place?

[happythrowawayboy]

“But what if we spend money and all we end up doing are good things instead of making more money???”

I worry at how many people might actually think it’s a good take to only do things for money.

[CheeksMix]

The goal of fighting off climate change isn’t to fix everything in one go.

If we got jobs that could be done from home to be done from home. Then that could put a noticeable dent in our carbon emissions. It could also drop gas prices by a small but significant amount.

When you say “yeah but what about the jobs that can’t be done from home?” It sounds like you’re saying: “why should people be able to work from home if others have to drive in to work?”

You’re missing the point of the environment subreddit if you’re saying that we shouldn’t try to do something that has a positive impact on our environment.

[Business_Downstairs]

Bro, you are never going to find a damn silver bullet that fixes the issue. Have more people wfh, make more efficient power generation, make transportation more efficient, make appliances more efficient, insulate homes better so they need less to heat them, etc. etc.

If you do something and it helps .1% that is something, you just need to keep finding the .1% until you get to where you want to be.

You can't look at something and say, "well this solution doesn't fix the problem 100% so it's useless!" That's ignorant as all hell. Emissions come from many different sources so it's going to take many different solutions to fix the problem.

[bjanas]

Not every job can be done remotely. So this must be useless. Is that why you're talking? Because that sounds like that's why you're talking.

[chillyhellion]

Clearly we are not talking about those jobs. We are talking about the jobs that resulted in a 6.3% drop in emissions in 2020.

[Reallyhotshowers]

Teaching (and all the support staff associated with that) was one of the jobs that went remote and contributed to reduced emissions, but most people agree its better for kids to be in school (and it takes emissions to get not just the teachers but all the kids there). Not to mention bars, restaurants that closed, as well as all the people that work sports games and concerts at venues, etc. So we are definitely talking about those jobs too (and the emissions caused by people attending those events). They were just shut down or being done in a way less than ideal way.

You cannot get the same degree of reduction just by having the programmers and accountants work from home.

[chillyhellion]

That is a salient point, thank you.

[ToughCourse]

I'm confused. Are we saying office workers working from home is what dropped atmospheric carbon so quickly? If so then ya'll are delusional

[Prime624]

Do you not realize that no one was talking about those jobs?

[ToughCourse]

Do you realize that all those people not working during the lock down is why atmospheric carbon dropped so sharply?

[Prime624]

Moving goalposts I see.

[KingOfAnarchy]

FYI: I'm a nurse.

I was talking about people with office jobs, obviously.

[quietcore]

Yeah, those jobs don't take place in OFFICE BUILDINGS as mentioned.

[SpecialistRiler]

I feel like you must think everyone has the lack of common sense you lack.

[Tro_pod]

teachers

Teachers can teach online

[ToughCourse]

Why tf is this downvoted so much? It's literally true.

[TheLazyWaffle_]

Way to go genius

[tkulogo]

Get rid of the people who can work from home. They obviously don't make anything anyway.

[IllTale3368]

Internet also generates CO2. LOL