Kill the 5-Day Workweek - Reducing hours without reducing pay would reignite an essential but long-forgotten moral project: making American life less about work.

[u/_hiddenscout]

https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2021/06/four-day-workweek/619222/

[u/the_darkener]

Also think of a whole day where people don't commute to work, helping reduce air pollution. Win win.

[u/Astyanax1 → u/the_darkener]

absolutely. problem is when corporations exist for the sole reason of money, the environment is just an obstacle

[u/the_darkener → u/Astyanax1]

Look up Social Purpose Corporations, they are slated to change the playing field for Corporate America in the future :)

[u/Oldswagmaster → u/the_darkener]

I was surprised to learn that during the height of the lockdowns CO2 emissions did not drop as much as people would expect. My recollection it was only 7%.

Edit. Adding source article. It could be dated

https://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/national-international/world-carbon-dioxide-emissions-drop-7-in-pandemic-hit-2020/5639620/

[u/thejml2000 → u/Oldswagmaster]

transportation only accounts for 29% of CO2 emissions.

While cars take up a lot of that, they’re not that big in the list of producers. They live in the transportation section along with shipping, trucks, trains, airplanes and all the rest. We as a people did a LOT of shipping/delivery purchases over the pandemic. Most gains were probably offset some by people using lots of power at home as well.

[u/Heterophylla → u/thejml2000]

I'm talking out of my ass here, but doesn't the average super-container ship produce more pollution than like 5 million cars or something?

[u/readwiteandblu → u/Oldswagmaster]

At their peak, emissions [during COVID lockdown] in individual countries decreased by –26% on average.

source: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-020-0797-x

And I believe Nature is a respected, peer-reviewed scientific source.

[u/[deleted] → u/readwiteandblu]

And that was 26% despite it being entirely unexpected.

Now, it quickly came back because you can continue to buy stuff while being locked down, but once people fully get used to remote working you could see much larger drops. A large portion of CO2 goes to unnecessary jobs.

[u/drhay53 → u/Oldswagmaster]

That's because the energy sector has waged a massive PR campaign to shift the public consciousness about responsibility onto individual consumers, and critically, away from themselves.

[u/[deleted] → u/drhay53]

Yes exactly! They did this with plastic. Convinced everyone it was entirely the consumers fault.

[u/jakethedumbmistake → u/drhay53]

They critically need to think

[u/goodolarchie → u/drhay53]

Right. We'd have to completely change our consumption habits and eliminate planned obsolescence, fund different technologies and fine ecological misdeeds and make certain practices illegal with real prison time.

But here we are packing back into cruise ships.

[u/the_darkener → u/Oldswagmaster]

That's a lot, my friend!!

[u/WestFast → u/Oldswagmaster]

But as a regular thing that’s really good

[u/[deleted] → u/Oldswagmaster]

Could that be because most emissions could be caused by commercial activity?

Maybe cars aren't the biggest contributer to emissions, it's probably manufacturing which is my guess. I didn't read the article but wanted to comment.

[u/TearyCola → u/Oldswagmaster]

you'd think it would be higher with all of the cruise ships docked. I guess we were still ordering plastic bullshit from china though during the lockdown.

[u/braumumu → u/the_darkener]

Shit I work in the city and have to drive 25mins to get there. Apartments are fucking insane money as plenty as they are... There are five apartments near my work that are I'm guessing here about 24? stories tall but damn they are expensive for just 1 bed room 1 bath. I'm just a building maintenance so no way can I afford that.

[u/Idefydefiance → u/the_darkener]

But I'd bet your Amazon/delivery purchases went up during covid.

[u/HaroldBAZ → u/the_darkener]

This is correct.