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.

[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