Comment by bit_logic | Hacker News Reader

Comment by bit_logic | Hacker News Reader

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The discussion so far is about work/life balance, productivity, etc. And those are very important and should be discussed.

However, I think the climate change impact is underappreciated. An example with some numbers I picked to keep the math simple:

Assume a 40 mile round trip daily commute. And also a 40mpg car. Here's the effective mpg of that car with days per week WFH (when WFH, the car trip that didn't happen can be considered virtual miles traveled with no gas used):

0 days WFH for the week: 40mpg

1 days WFH for the week: 200 miles / 4 gallons = 50mpg

2 days WFH for the week: 200 miles / 3 gallons = 66mpg

3 days WFH for the week: 200 miles / 2 gallons = 100mpg

4 days WFH for the week: 200 miles / 1 gallons = 200mpg

The debate is too much about extremes (full remote vs full in office). A partial solution of just letting everyone have 2-3 days of WFH could allow employees, employers, and society to get a lot of the benefits of both remote and in office.

Yes, when you drive a carbon-dioxide emitting vehicle less, the impact on the climate is lessened.

When working from home, you don't drive anywhere. That's a distance of zero miles traveled, whether they are virtual or real. I think the calculation you've shown doesn't really add to the point you're trying to make.

It's clear if you're aware of environmental policy in the US. There's a big fight right now between the federal government and CA just to keep a modest target of 50 mpg average for cars by 2025. Climate change discussion here involving cars is often expressed with mpg as the main metric, they even created mpge for EV to try to link the two.

The climate cost isnt inherent in commuting though, only for commutes in a personal vehicle. Commutes by public transportation may have much lower per capita emissions (for a well utilized system), and marginally the carbon difference of adding one more commuter to an existing transit system is effectively 0

Right but in the US the vast majority of areas require cars. Things are just very spread out and so everything was designed for cars. It's not feasible to do public transportation like in Europe in most places because of the very low density and vast areas.

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