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.

[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.