Why we need to keep remote working in place

Peter du ToitI'm the founder of FutureWork IQ where I spend my time assisting businesses to improve their climate literacy so as to understand the projected impacts from the expanding climate crisis and how to adapt their workplaces in the face of these impacts.

The pandemic has made one thing abundantly clear — almost all of the estimated one billion global knowledge workers can get their work done from anywhere and does not require their presence in an office.

The science is clear, in order for us to avoid a climate catastrophe, driven by human caused CO2 emissions, we must urgently migrate to a low-carbon economy. The available data shows we need to do reduce global emissions by 7.6% every year until 2030 to meet the 1.5°C Paris target

Here is what we now know:

1) The IEA estimates that global CO2 emissions fell by 8% during 2020.

2) Transportation is responsible for 24% of global direct CO2 emissions. Cars, trucks and buses makeup 3/4 of those emissions.

3) Pictured is the dramatic decrease in road transport activity during the pandemic. In fact it is estimated that global emissions from surface transportation fell by 36% during 2020, making it the largest contributor to the total emission reduction for the year!

One thing is very clear from this, if we continued with remote working, thus eliminating the need for daily commutes we would make significant progress towards reaching the goal of a 7.6% reduction in yearly emissions.

We have proven we can do this.

We have the technology and know-how to effectively allow a billion people to work from anywhere.

We have a moral and ethical obligation to do this.