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Ask HN: Why isn't remote work advertised as a pro environment initiative?

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Re: Ask HN: Why isn't remote work advertised as a pro environment initiative?

#111

Post by bombcar »

TuringNYC wrote: post #102
simonmesmith wrote: post #7

Similarly, I often wonder why cities don’t promote local telecommuting over building expensive public transportation infrastructure. Building one kilometre of subway costs anywhere from around $100 million to $1.6 billion ( https://marroninstitute.nyu.edu/events/how-much-does-it-cost... ), and then requires subsidies to run. Why not use this money to provide incentives for people to telecommute? And while some might…

>> Similarly, I often wonder why cities don’t promote local telecommuting over building expensive public transportation infrastructure. Because if they promote it too much, they people move far away and the city loses the tax base. One extreme example is New York City -- they have a 3.5% income tax. If you move into next-door NJ or CT, the city loses that 3.5% income.

This is part of it - once you're telecommuting then one of the main things holding you to a particular area is gone.

And once telecommuting is common in a given company, the workers begin to disperse, first to "driving distance" and then to "anywhere in a reasonable timezone".

We already saw how badly Covid hit city centers, perpetual work-from-home would be worse; causing a mini-Detroit in many cities.

Re: Ask HN: Why isn't remote work advertised as a pro environment initiative?

#112

Post by Eric_WVGG »

w0de0 wrote: post #96
Eric_WVGG wrote: post #88

The majority of advertising on environmental initiatives ("hey go out there and recycle" and that kind of crap) is funded by polluters to shift the conversation from a manufacturer problem to a consumer problem. You need to ask "who is advertising" and "who is the market." So let's say Zoom wanted to run an initiative like this… the market wouldn't be workers, it's be the bosses. So already you're talking about a tin…

> No billboards or tv spends, that's for the mass market Neither the billboards for Brex on the drive to Mission from SFO, nor those for Boeing in the Washington, D.C. metro, nor those “for your consideration” on the Sunset Strip come Oscar season, are meant for a mass market. This doesn’t seem a sound premise. In being so physical, billboards are hardly mass media at all. More big brochures.

:) I haven't been to any of those places, but I was in LA last summer and saw "for your consideration" billboards everywhere. One might argue that those billboards also drive up the marketing for rentals, streaming and DVD sales… but anyway, good point.

Re: Ask HN: Why isn't remote work advertised as a pro environment initiative?

#113

Post by adql »

smaudet wrote: post #52
luminouslow wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know about you but we still use the internet/zoom etc. in the office so you still need datacenters >lack of commuting incentivizes un-environmental and inefficient suburban sprawl I dont understand this point, IMO commuting leads to more suburban sprawl? Also i think this is a very USA-centric problem.

This may not be universally true, but voice-only makes a difference, too. Audio is very low bandwidth, but for work it is usually more than adequate. Screenshare, where important, is mostly just a matter of providing small diffs over time, it's usually much cheaper both to encode/decode than normal video streaming. You can also run it point to point in smaller calls, which means fewer hops and datacenters (more route…

That's a nice excuse for when I want to just do what I want instead of staring at stupid camera just so someone can see me looking at them in the square on their screen.

Re: Ask HN: Why isn't remote work advertised as a pro environment initiative?

#114

Post by itake »

chitowneats wrote: post #42
itake wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If I worked from home I'd get a big house in the suburbs, and buy a car to get around. My environmental footprint would be much bigger. For me, WFH means I can walk/bike/drive to the local coffee shop or public library to work, but still live in a cramped studio apartment.

The amount of productivity I lose when trying to work this way, hunched over my laptop screen in a public place, is immense. An office, downtown or at home, is absolutely necessary. Are you a software engineer?

I am SWE and Engineering Manager. I find open offices to be way more distracting b/c people discuss topics relevant to me (project work or even good morning hellos).

Public libraries are quieter than my office and coffee shop noise is background noise.

Lack of external monitors is a fair concern, but I found external monitors to be too distracting. I only need to look at one thing at a time. I don't want random things popping up on the screen next to me.

Re: Ask HN: Why isn't remote work advertised as a pro environment initiative?

#115

Post by bombcar »

bamboozled wrote: post #93
luxuryballs wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

because it’s more expensive to let it get cold and then heat it back up again

Any evidence to support this? I've heard otherwise.

It depends on what you mean by "let it get cold" and how good your insulation is and a number of other factors.

But thermal mass can be a big thing. My house isn't even all that well insulated, and when it is 0º F outside, it only drops about 10 degrees if the furnace is off all day.

Re: Ask HN: Why isn't remote work advertised as a pro environment initiative?

#116

Post by Tade0 »

I actually don't know the answer to this question and what baffles me the most is hearing what urban/transport activists have to say about that - those I talked with either ignore it completely or argue that it's worse because it "induces sprawl".

I have quite a few people in my social circle who moved out to the suburbs/countryside and remote work was by and large considered only after they moved and found that they underestimated what an issue their commute would be(especially when traffic increased over time as it usually does).

Personally I live in the city and still work remotely because it's more convenient than travelling to work daily regardless how close to the workplace I might live.

Re: Ask HN: Why isn't remote work advertised as a pro environment initiative?

#117

Post by christkv »

lm28469 wrote: post #37
rg111 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

500 individual houses would be heated anyway.

Why would you heat a house if you're not in it. Do people really do that ?

In Northern Europe you have to keep a minimum temperature or things like your pipes might burst when its -20C outside.

Re: Ask HN: Why isn't remote work advertised as a pro environment initiative?

#118

Post by eloff »

Because people don't look at issues like climate change rationally. We're attacking the problem almost randomly based on what's politically expedient/ popular instead of what gives the biggest greenhouse gas reduction for the price.

To phrase it another way, our governments are fucking stupid and it makes me sad.

If we really care about this problem, we should attack it coldly, rationally, as an engineer or economist might.

Re: Ask HN: Why isn't remote work advertised as a pro environment initiative?

#119

Post by Root_Denied »

ivan_gammel wrote: post #104
rr888 wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes I like my apartment. The commute is just a few stops. I like the office, prefer to WFH. I like the suburbs but wife would rather be in the city, I'm happy here too. The main point is that living in a city and commuting probably has a smaller environmental impact than WFH, which is the opposite of what OP is saying.

Why not living in the city in a sufficiently big apartment and working from home?

That's cost prohibitive for the amount of space you'd need as compared with moving to suburban/rural locations.

Possible? Yes, but not necessarily the best financial decision when cities seem to be allergic to increasing population density.

Re: Ask HN: Why isn't remote work advertised as a pro environment initiative?

#120

Post by bombcar »

dennis_jeeves1 wrote: post #78
stcroixx wrote: post #33

Because employers do not really care about the environment. They’re pretending to because they think supporting the cause positively impacts their revenue. When they have a choice to make an impact, like now, they pass.

>Because employers do not really care about the environment. This is the correct answer. Most environment related stuff (and other causes that are taken up) is mostly virtue signalling.

Yep. You have to make the environmental goal correspond to a money goal of some sort.

And this can be exceptionally difficult because it can be almost impossible to actually work out the long-term effects of things like "more people should work from home". It's easy to say "shutting down a coal power plant will reduce emissions" because they're so bad, but more remote workers could result in MORE pollution if it enabled more "working holidays" and therefore more flying. And that's only one tiny aspect of all the long-term changes that could occur.

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