Corporations should be held responsible for the emissions caused by their employee’s commuting.
This would really change the discussion about return to office.
Lol they spent decades doing the opposite, generating the vast majority of emissions with big manufacturing and big livestock, and then successfully shifting blame on poor peasants claiming the planet is heating because they’re not sorting their recycling well enough.
Yes and also by telling us to buy expensive electric cars because the environment needs us to.
Companies should be on the hook for all negative externalities. Make them internalities and watch how quick things change
Yes, but we need to see everyone in person!!!11111 There are intangible benefits and impromptu synergies, etc… /s
Bro, I literally want to punch everyone in the office.
See, and how would you do that if everyone is at home? So office is clearly superior and totally necessary >!/s!<
LOL - game, set, match.
Modern accounting techniques are amazing and super effective, barely unchanged since their codification in the 1490s by an Italian scholar named Luca Pacioli. The biggest weakness of accounting though is its inability to capture externalities. How does one company record the cost of their employees commute? How do you even begin to calculate that? How do you measure the cost of extra leukemia cases in a town ten years after a train derails nearby? How do you record that in your books? How do you calculate and record the distress these huge noisy shipping vessels cause whales? It’s just so subjective and impractical.
In the city of Seattle, for example, every year, companies over a certain number of employees are required to participate in an annual transportation survey. The employees are surveyed. The questions ask how far the employee commutes to work, how long it takes, and by what method (private vehicle, car pool, public transportation), how many days a year they work from home, or take off, etc. The effort is to assess the impact on environment, parking infrastructure, public transportation, roads, etc.
Obviously, there isn’t a 100% response rate so the data is extrapolated from the responses to the total number of employees employeed at that site (probably why they only poll companies of a minimum size and larger).
If they wanted to implement something like this in seattle, then the next step would be to take the data they already have and start sending those companies a new bill for a new annual tax based on the assessment.
Lots of taxes work off of an estimated assessment rather than having to account for every nut snd bolt of the thing (property taxes, for example).
So how do you do it? That’s how you do it. This isn’t rocket science, and you don’t need to invent new accounting methods or worry about the accounting-sky falling to accomplish it.
Regarding commuting specifically I meant how do you determine the cost of each extra pound of co2 in the atmosphere. It’s inherently incalculable because the effects of climate change are insanely complex. That’s my point about externalities. How do you price the value of standing in an open meadow at dusk?
The point of my earlier comment was that the inability to account down to the last carbon atom isn’t a valid reason not to start with more generalized high-level estimates and work just from those until/if a better way of doing it is either becomes available or becomes a necessity.
It’s like arguing that we might as well not accept the existence of circles because we can’t calculate to the final digit of pi…when really, for most things, we don’t need that level of precision to still do a good job discussing roundness.
Pi can be rounded. It’s infamously difficult to compute externalities in any meaningful sense. Even more difficult to implement a fair and actionable policy for it. You can google “accounting for externalities” and read a bunch f articles and academic papers on the subject, which has been debated for decades.
Beyond fines for dumping chemicals in rivers, and carbon taxes, etc, stronger EPA, etc, I don’t really have any good ideas for codifying a real actual plan into law. Probably easier to raise corporate tax rates up a few points from 21% to whatever and use it to fund green energy and cleanup projects etc, rather than change accounting methods to try and capture the costs that way.
It seems simpler to just tax gas at a more rational rate.
Simpler perhaps, but not really better. High gas prices hurt the poor disproportionately because it’s a larger part of their income, they don’t have as much control over WFH policies or their locations for reducing commutes, and they can’t typically afford to upgrade to fuel efficient vehicles. Plus since almost everything is transported by truck, high gas prices make the cost of everything else go up too.
I think part of the labor shortage is from people who did the math and quit after realising that they weren’t actually earning anything after subtracting transportation costs.
If we’re talking about some sort of tax on employers based on the commute of their employees, it’s going to disproportionately affect the poor anyway. If you tax employers though you’re incentivizing further control of their employees lives.
Yes, higher gas prices would increase the cost of shipping and therefore most products, but there’s no world in which we hold corporations accountable for their externalities and consumer goods remain as cheap as they are.
And time. Instead of commuting, I’ll mow my grass, water the plants, do some chores, etc.
My wife commutes and can’t work remotely. I try to consider that and do more chores to bring balance.
That extra 20-30 minutes in the morning and 40 minutes in the PM is priceless, actually.
I agree.
Time truly is our greatest resource as people and getting some back instead of driving is fantastic.
Yep. I have to go into the office 3 days a week. I get up for my first meeting, do some light work, then shower and get ready during my working hours, and leave on the bus. I’ll get there around 11-11:30 usually. Then I’ll leave to be home around 5. I’m not wasting my time on this bullshit. Working from home is way more relaxing and efficient.
One criticism of WFH is that you’ll have increased energy bills since you’re home all day. Aside from the obvious reasons that’s wrong, this provides hard data showing that WFH is better for the environment in addition to being better for literally everyone except commercial real estate investors.
WFH allowance should be mandated – anyone that wants it for a job where it’s possible must be allowed it. it’s such a dramatic quality of life difference.
for literally no cost too. What exactly are companies losing with WFH? Literaly nothing.
Control. And that is a scary thing to lose if you’re a bad manager.
Then hire better managers
people who burn less gas and consume less resources burn less gas and consume less resources, more news at 11.
but it’s nice they’re pinning numbers onto the amounts
As a full time remote worker, I can confirm, I’m driving so much less. My commute prior to the pandemic was 18 minutes (12.7 miles one way), so 25 miles round trip with 36 minutes spent driving each work day. My commute was short compared to a lot of other people I worked with who’d drive 45 minutes one way, some 1 hour one way! That’s a lot of driving that can be cut out if the role allows for remote work.
I find I’m less angry too. A lot of bad drivers out there. Lol
Ah yah…lots of stupid drivers here just piss me off…lots of traffic compared to last year too…
Just being stuck in traffic when you could be getting shit done is what gets me. Time/money/carbon emissions… just wasteful in every way
I have a theory about the increase of bad drivers that seems to have happened after the pandemic. So most of the higher paid desk jobs where usually people are more intelligent mostly went to WFH. So there are less intelligent people on the road than there used to be. So now it’s all idiots in cars taking free reign of the roads. Less traffic causes the idiots to be able to more freely speed and run reds. I know since working from home I drive about 90% less and when I do I am scared for my life.
As someone who works a desk job, no, there are lots of idiots in those jobs, and lots of smart people digging ditches.
i just worked out im saving 2160 litres of fuel a year by not driving every day
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I changed mine before a ~1500 mile road trip summer of 2022. Flipped to the percentage (Honda) the other day just out of curiosity and it’s still at 60%, lol. I put so few miles on that thing it’s crazy. I sometimes go a few miles to lunch. Outside that we use it for hardware store runs here and there. I guess I did drive it to a wedding a couple weeks back but that was because I knew we would be parking in a farm field and it’s my only 4 wheel drive vehicle. Probably should change the oil before winter just for good measure.
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Just being able to cook at home has reduced our food waste for sure.
I know it has reduced my food spending and leftover utilization.
I went from commuting close to 2 hours daily, with much of that spent stuck in traffic, to working fully remotely. I’d have to get gas every week. Now I go weeks at a time before needing to get gas.
Even better, I used to work for a chemical company part of one of the big oil and gas corporations. Now I work for a green energy company. It cracks me up just how different the two situations are.
I’ve actually started… walking to work. It takes me like 45min. So it’s not a short walk, though it’s a very short car commute. But the world is so different now that I’m walking. Having lived in car dependency vs walking is so different. And it’s healthy for you too. More people should try it, if i’s possible.
id love to do that. unfortunatly its either 90-120 minute drive (each way) or train-train-bike for 6km (2-2.5hr each way)
Its not the destination, it’s the journey
If it’s a nice walk I’m game. I’m continually impressed with how walkable many cities are (except mine of course). If it’s ball sweating hot, walking through endless sprawl, dodging cars, on noisy highways, forget it.
I actually started on the day when it was 40°C / 104°F in humidex. Significantly less than favorable conditions. But I figured, if I can do that, I can do any other day. I do have the entire path with sidewalks though. And even a little bit of a park I can cut through.
You’re hardcore. I just can’t do that though. I’m in good shape but I sweat a LOT and can’t show up at the office drenched. It would ruin my day.
Add to that a podcast, an e-reader or just jogging to work and those 90 min will be pure investment. Well done.
I listen to either music or audiobook. Yeah, time goes fast.
I have solar panels on my roof. My employer’s building does not.
Well, I’ve traded burning fuel for burning internet and electricity at my home. My electricity at home is mostly solar (from my roof) and hydro from the grid (I live in Washington State).
Working from home spares me ~20 uncompensated transit hours a week, so the emissions difference (whether I use transit or drive) is substantial and so is the cost savings (in fuel and parking). FWIW, my employer will pay for my transit fares (but not fuel or parking) and that’s nice and all, but I’m squeamish about transit during flu/covid season because of all those coughing people going in to jobs that don’t encourage them to stay home while sick.
I’m able to work more hours when I do it from home because I’m not constrained by transit schedules/catching the last train out of town, and that way I still come out ahead in terms of having time with my kids, and I have time to take grocery shopping and meal planning and prep off of my wife’s plate.
It’s better this way, not just in terms of cost and environmental impact and quality of life, but productivity-wise.
If the American owner class has taught Americans paying any attention the last century anything about how they operate, it’s “Fuck the commons/planet/species/future, burn it all if it makes me a dollar slightly faster!”
Profit in this case being all the corporate park land they own. Propagating human misery at every step for nothing more than to run up their capital ego score, that doesn’t even effect their living conditions at all.
Good thing they don’t consider their victims, people without significant net worth, human.
Does it even make them any money if someone is inside the building? It seems more like justifying a purchase that didn’t pan out.
It’s about holding value for them. Small/medium businesses paying rent in perpetuity to the corporate owners of business complexes. Yes, they’d rather others suffer and the planet burn if it means their capital investment is reaping dividends.
That’s why we’re on the brink, it’s not like man made climate change hasn’t been known for half a century. Our owners only care about their capital scores. They destroyed our republic and captured our government that was supposed to regulate/check them for us to increase their capital scores. They’re destroying the climate and hobbling the species for generations to increase their capital scores.
Why does everyone act surprised when our owner class acts like sociopaths? Thats why they’re in our owner class to begin with. Welcome to America, where practiced sociopathy gets you a corner office, and practiced prosocial vocations and empathy gets you a cardboard box on the sidewalk.
Your employer isn’t earning money by having you in the office. But they are losing money on the lease or mortgage for the property if you’re not in the office.
No, but it makes the cities where those buildings reside a boatload of tax revenue. I wouldn’t be surprised to find out that a lot of the “return to office” propaganda was coming from local governments freaking out about the abrupt downturn in tax income from commuters.
In the two weeks since my work mandated three days in the office I’ve spent $150 on gas. Awesome.
Granted part of that reason is the car broke down and I had to drive the truck.Non-existent public transport much?
