As long as aggressively promoting WFH doesn't penalise people for whom this is not an option.
It's a lot easier to buy a cheap used car than uproot your entire living situation to a new home where you can WFH, which you also might not be able to afford.
Not to mention you probably already own your car for other things like getting groceries.
The current situation is far worse. People are literally trapped in a cycle of poverty or bad work experience because they cannot get to a suburban office park for want of a car.
WFH has lots of limitations. Distribute work geographically and you can lower costs and improve outcomes. Why have accounts payable reps in New Jersey in a giant office when I could rent a small office in Maine or Kentucky for 80% less and pay the workers 30% less, without the complexities of offshoring.
These are called offices.
Look, I WFH and I love it. But in the process I probably quintupled my emissions. I might be able to get that down to quadrupling with an EV and full solar array. But the realities of suburban/rural living are simply much harsher on the environment.
I guess ecological rural living may not be easy if you enjoy lots of social activities. For an introvert like me it wouldn't be a problem.
You’re still consuming massive resources in transporting materials to a low-density location. Unless you’re living completely off the land, de-densifying is far more impactful. (Consider how much land alone would be converted from nature to human use by spreading out the populations of New York and Los Angeles.)
My goal is to get the best candidates. My reasons are selfish - I can get great people cheap if they have circumstances problematic for other employers.
So I got a 5 desks in a small town in the middle of nowhere, and about 15 people in that region utilize it.
Everyone wins: i spend almost nothing. The employee has a great job, doesn’t have to drive 90 minutes, and doesn’t have to disrupt the family life.
What process ? WFH doesn't mean you have to move out of the city and build a huge house with all the modern bells and whistles
It doesn’t, but within the context of this discussion (“distribute geographically”), it does. The logistics of groceries—even exempting my driving to the grocery store versus walking down the street, and despite being physically closer to farms than I was in New York City—practically doubled my emissions alone. Suburban living is massively more impactful than most people realise. There is a reason most of the world lives in either cities or rural destitution.
The misguided vision of late 20th century life and de-industrialization of the US made sustainable communities unsustainable.
Modern governance has created strong incentives for massive, centralized industries. Thats why if you step into a Walmart near my home in upstate New York in October, the shelves are full of apples from Washington picked a year ago.
New York City is a great example of fake sustainability. The financial engineering required to build an operate unnecessary and overbuilt real property has priced out the smaller scale public infrastructure like retail and diners. The landlords can lower rents without their loans being called, and a ton of the older big buildings are vacant and declining.
If people can work and make a living in Binghamton, NY or Scranton, PA, sustainable communities will emerge. Sucking the wealth of the nation to the top 10 metros is to everyone’s disadvantage, as modern society aptly demonstrates.
I also wonder whether owning a car just 'for groceries' is that commonplace?
If we cared we could solve the bulk of problem somewhat easily, the 80/20 rule still applies but you could drastically reduce the number of cars on the road. Of course if all you care about is short term personal convenience and individualism then we're doomed, but if you care just a tiny bit about optimisation, pollution, long term sustainability, well being, the solutions are painfully obvious