Software engineer Leisen Huang working at Wonder Workshop, San Mateo, California, in 2015. Lea Suzuki/San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images
This story was originally published by Grist and Fast Company and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.
When office workers stopped working in offices in 2020, trading their cubicles for living room couches during COVID-19 lockdowns, many began questioning those hours they had spent commuting to work. All those rushed mornings stuck in traffic could have been spent getting things done? Life was often lonely for those stuck in their homes, but people found something to appreciate when birdsong rang through the quiet streets. And the temporary dip in travel had the side effect of cutting global carbon emissions by 7 percent in 2020—a blip of good news in an otherwise miserable year.
Emissions bounced back in 2021, when people started resuming some of their normal activities, but offices have never been the same. While remote work was rare before the pandemic, today, 28 percent of Americans are working a “hybrid” schedule, going into the office some days, and 13 percent are working remotely full-time.
Recent data suggest that remote work could speed along companies’ plans to zero out their carbon emissions, but businesses don’t seem to be considering climate change in their decisions about the future of office work. “In the US, I’m sad to say it’s just not high on the priority list,” said Kate Lister, the founder of the consulting firm Global Workplace Analytics. “It gets up there, and then it........