JetUNsetter

I mean the obvious: commuting is polluting. This is too obvious.

On top, we build our solis twice: different building to work, different to live.

In fact we replicate all that tech and human modern living standards twice. Elevators, artificial lighting (because we all know it’s bad to have office space with natural lighting flooding in, don’t we? (!)), all those chemicals to clean those massive surfaces, the plastic food serviced at the cantine, the extra fridges for the coke, the milk and lunch box to stay edible (cause we don’t switch off the fridge at home whilst in the office you know)… the extra sets of screens and keyboards and all rotting in the office over the weekend, on Mondays and Fridays (for those opting for a hybrid model) on top of the ones at home. Cause, you know, you are still expected to check a few things out at home even if WFH is forbidden, in the evening or over the weekend so you do need a dissent set up to deliver on that.

How can any company care about its carbon footprint, or claim is product is sustainable and still push people to go into offices?? How?

I know, I know. “The economy stupid”. WFH is about the economy, isn’t it? Thank God (whatever you chose to call God if anyone at all), economy is resilient. Coffee shops, laundry and delis will just move where people live and work vs where people work. Or better even, that duplicate space we call offices can be repurposed. Some vast green space left in the city suburbs might actually survive cause we will live (and work) in the city centre! The economy is resilient the Earth is not. Not necessarily for our species. What the economy debate is about here is whether wealth will switch pockets or not and not whether wealth will be generated.

Imagine neighborhoods where people live and work. The gyms, the coffee shops, the laundry, the delis, the nail salons, any salons, will thrive but in different ways to what we know today.

Happier parents will do the school runs. Happier kids will come home to a house with the parents in and possibly a hot meal on the table! People will start bonding with their neighbors instead of colleagues and might even start activities to make their neighborhoods better vs drinking at the pub round the corner from the office to swallow the stress induced by the open space office… Imagine…

This seems too obvious but please help me make sense of this one too…