The energy crunch is forcing governments to adopt extreme measures to save fuel; in Thailand, government employees are being asked to take the stairs.
Asia’s governments are scrambling to manage a fuel shortage caused by high oil prices and a closed Strait of Hormuz. Asia is particularly dependent on oil exports from the Middle East; Japan and South Korea respectively source 90% and 70% of their oil from the region.NHAC NGUYEN VIA GETTY IMAGES
Closed schools. Work-from-home demands. Price caps.Asia’s governments are scrambling to manage a fuel shortage caused by high oil prices and a closed Strait of Hormuz. Asia is particularly dependent on oil exports from the Middle East; Japan and South Korea respectively source 90% and 70% of their oil from the region.
The energy crunch is forcing governments to adopt more extreme measures to save fuel.
On March 10, Thailand ordered civil servants to take the stairs rather than the elevator, and to work-from-home for the duration of the crisis. It increased the air-conditioning temperature to 27 degrees Celsius, and will tell government employees to wear short-sleeved shirts over suits. (Thailand has about 95 days of energy reserves left, according to Reuters).
Vietnam also called on businesses to let people work-from-home to “reduce the need for travel and transportation.” The Philippines is pushing for a four-day work week, and has ordered officials to limit travel “to essential functions only.”
South Asia is getting hit hard too. Bangladesh brought forward the Eid-al-fitr holiday, allowing universities to close early in a bid to save fuel. Pakistan also instituted a four-day week for government offices and closed schools. India suspended shipments of liquefied petroleum gas to commercial operators to prioritize supplies for households, leading to worries from hotels and restaurants that they may be forced to close without fuel supplies.
Asian countries are also intervening more directly into fuel markets.
South Korean President Lee Jae Myung on Monday said the country would introduce a price cap on petroleum products, and warned that the current crisis presented a “significant burden on the country’s economy.” Around 1.7 million barrels of Korea-bound oil has been held back per day due to the ongoing conflict, presidential policy advisor Kim Yong-beom noted during a March 9 press briefing.
Ryosei Akazawa, Japan’s industry minister, didn’t rule out dipping into Japan’s national oil reserves on Wednesday, adding the country “will take all possible measures to ensure stable supplies of energy”.
On Monday, Indonesia’s finance minister said the Southeast Asian country would set aside 381.3 trillion rupiah ($22.6 billion) for energy subsidies and pay state energy firms like Pertamina to keep fuel and electricity prices affordable for its residents.
Thailand plans to freeze cooking gas prices until May, and encourage consumers to use alternative energy sources, like biodiesel and benzene. Vietnam is also considering scrapping its tariffs on fuel imports.
Oil prices have had a volatile few days. WTI crude prices surged to over $115 per barrel on Monday, only to swing back and forth as competing statements emerged from Washington. WTI Crude is now past $90 per barrel, as of Wednesday evening.
On March 11, the International Energy Agency’s 32 member countries unanimously agreed to release 400 million barrels of oil from their emergency reserves.
Flows from the Middle East are still constrained, with the Strait of Hormuz effectively closed to maritime traffic. “While oil reached $150/bbl [per barrel] in inflation-adjusted terms during the 2022 Russia/Ukraine crisis, this situation could prove more severe…supply volumes at risk this time are dimensionally bigger—and real,” wrote Wood Mackenzie analyst Simon Flowers in a research note. “In our view, $200/bbl is not outside the realms of possibility in 2026.”
I've long said that WFH is an easy win climate change solution that costs nothing, is well loved by everyone who participates (except management). Turns out in times like this, it's also an energy security measure.
I'm introverted but very glad I have the option of working from the office and being among fellow staff, we also have a lunchtime exercise club once a week. It's much better for my mental health.
In fact, I've added two days working outside of home instead of one because of the benefits. I think 3 days home/2 days office is the sweet spot.
We've been slowly creeping back toward being fully RTO, and my mental health has been in what I can only describe as "steep decline". I don't know if I pin it all on RTO, but it sure isn't helping the situation. I love my job, but hate the in-office requirements - I'm a systems admin.
Sorry to hear that. Being a sysadmin, I guess you're mainly interacting with systems rather than people and need to focus. They should exempt you from RTO except for the odd "all hands" meeting days.
I'm a software engineer in a Product Engineering team and it's about 75% hands-on engineering, 25% Slack/Teams interaction and alignments between people. I find being in the office helps to make connections with other staff in other teams (eg. bumping into people while making coffee in staff kitchen etc). I think thats important from a career perspective.
[flagged]
The keywords that you are not saying are "is a sweet spot FOR YOU"
If it is a sweet spot for you fine, I am happy you found it. But DO NOT FORCE all of US who have different sweet spots to meet you at yours.
Thanks pal, I was not forcing anyone... but I guess my wording made it sound "this applies to everyone!".
I put my comment out there to trigger just this kind of discussion.
Says that guys that FORCED all of America into car dependency
So you hate waffles?
The hubris of our generation damning our species into a global warming catastrophe just because we want to stand around the water cooler and have lunchtime exercise club for these last few decades at our apogee.
Zero days in office is the sweet spot. Get rid of all physical infrastructure. Its mind boggling that we are building a completely unnecessary second space for work and then build transportation infrastructure to move between two spaces all, compel people to drive back and forth, deal with traffic congestion and waste 2 hours/day, buy cars, pay for insurance, deal with accidents, use up precious mind space in driving through horrible traffic. If people have mental health issues, it doesn't mean that we need to build a second space for them. There are other ways to deal with mental health issues.
True, and then think of all the real estate that gets opened up for third spaces
While this is true and many people echo this, I also think this is partially caused by an over-reliance on work.
Ideally, we should not be put in a situation where we have to get necessary social health through our jobs. It should be through our hobbies, our passions, our friends, and our family. The people and things we choose to spend time with.
I'm not judging you either, because this is also the case for me. But, I think, if I was WFH, I would have a lot more free time. I could dedicate that to social interactions. Most people don't, but they could.
Having the option of working from the office is a good thing. It's only being unnecessarily forced to do so that's bad.
Even 3 days in office, 2 days home feels significantly better because that's the point at which one is spending less days out of the week in the office
I get that, and a lot of people like to be social with other people. But just because 10% (made up number) like it, there's no reason to force it on the rest of the workforce (not that you are).
I encourage people who are remote but want human contact to rent a desk once a week at a co-working space.
For me personally, I want to do my work as efficiently as possible, in as little time as possible, and then have my social time, which has very little in common with my work and/or colleagues.
I might be an exception, but I get up very, very early and work almost right away, and I don't want to be on a roll and then have to pack up, get in the car at a terrible traffic time where (some) people are driving like animals, hunt for parking and then find a desk. That's a huge _tax_ on my productivity.
But I don't expect or demand that the rest of the world do this.
As a side comment, I would agree with you though, that 2 in the office is better than one. But I also had a very effective pattern around 10 years ago, where I spent 2 days in the office per month, and that worked really well for me (though those days were far, far less productive than my at home work days).
Now, if the world adopted a 32 hour, 4-day work week I would probably be ok with the office 1 day a week.
What's your commute like? There are many aspects to the RTO vs. WFH debate, but having to waste away 1-3 hours a day on the road, coupled with the energy use in the OP, really cancels out the mental health aspects of being in office. It even detracts from the amount of work done.
The London office commute is 30 minutes train and 25 minutes walk. I really like that balance as it gives me sunlight, exercise and fresh air.
I work from a library on the other day, thats a 30 minute drive. I tend to leave before 0700 when the roads are peaceful. My car is pretty fuel efficient, i try to hypermile it and get ~50mpg.
Imagine how much more sunshine you could enjoy working in the evening and enjoying the outdoors during the day - good thing they've got the exercise club.
I know it's a meme on HN to say everyone likes WFH, but I (and many but not ICs around me) thrive more in person.
I am 100% more effective in person where I can dev and my desk and bounce ideas off if team mates around me verbally. This can be recreated in a remote environment by having things like a team Discord that folks sit on, but it can feel forced at times (just like communiting to the office I suppose).
My take might be heavily skewed though. I am in games and our environment is highly collaborative.
> where I can dev and my desk and bounce ideas off if team mates around me verbally.
Can't you fucking do your homework beforehand, think your idea thoroughly, and then have at least a small written paragraphs about it before interrupting your colleagues.
Really, I am not a co-processor in a bus for you to dispatch a job to me and raise an interrupt line whenever the fuck you fancy doing it.
> Can't you fucking do your homework beforehand, think your idea thoroughly, and then have at least a small written paragraphs about it before interrupting your colleagues.
They never said they didn't.
> Really, I am not a co-processor in a bus for you to dispatch a job to me and raise an interrupt line whenever the fuck you fancy doing it.
I am! I'm perfectly capable of managing my own time and shoeing others away if needed. Please bother me! That's why I have a cell phone and a salary.
Almost certainly relevant: I work in manufacturing.
Damn. Glad I don’t work with anyone like you
>at least a small written paragraphs about it before interrupting your colleagues.
Game design is messy and some things can only really be talked through.
Also, nothing here implies that GP doesn't think through their thoughts before bouncing off ideas.
>"I know it's a meme on HN to say everyone likes WFH"
I work from home for the last 25 years (I am an independent vendor, design and develop business critical products for medium size businesses). I have no desire to socialize with employees of my clients and when I am in a mood I have real fiends to spend time with.
Can't imagine wasting my time in corporate cubicles or open concept offices
I'm in games as well. I'm pretty mixed on it. For my experience
- first job, fully onsite. More traditional cubicle space
- second job, on-site until COVID came around. Literally a WeWork building as a sattellite office to HQ in San Fransico.
- third job, "0-100%" on site. There was an office and I could come into it never or all the time. More of an open office setup.
I will say it's nice to not need to spend 5 days commuting, and I really don't think we need to do that much collaboration to be productive. If you're local, I think a suggestion of 2-3 days in office would do wonders, reserved for "brainstorming" days or cross team syncs. for job 3, that was pretty much my schedule; typically come in TWTh, unless I was feeling sick (this was still the tail end of COVID).
But some camaraderie was nice. The games scene was really friendly for the most part (in my experience. I have heard second hand stories and don't want to discount those). There were community events, tribal wisdom you'd hear over water-cooler talk, impromptu group lunches, and seasonal parties. It was nice, being around other passionate people who had similar interests to you. I definitely miss that most.
Productivity-wise, I'm not sure I noticed much difference. I had enough space to setup a dedicated office room, so that's definitely one privilege I had. But I had on-off days in office and remote. Maybe my most productive days were in office, but that was usually over guidance from a lead.
I don't think everyone needs to be on-site per se. But I do see some situations where on-site is beneficial to have, at least in partial capacity.
1. Juniors definitely need some on-site guidance (and by that extension, leads need to be available those days). I really cannot imagine those early mentoring being as effective over a screen. There's so much "body language" style of knowledge gained that doesn't come up in zoom meetings (and while proposed, I really hate the idea of an "always on" chat-room)
2. brainstorming, architecturing , and conceptualizing felt much better in person. So some periods may need more in-office time than others where it's focused on development (which feels to have minimal impact, given the nature of "head down" work).
3. Office space might be a consideration depending on your living space. If you are in a small apartment with little desk space, I can see that having a huge impact to productivity.
I hate WFH, personally. My company is actually closing the office I work out of due to lack of use, so I'm in the opposite scenario from "forced-RTO", I'm being moved to "forced-WFH." It's the right call objectively, the office is genuinely very empty, but I'm a bit annoyed about it. I'm actually going to be paying to rent a desk out of a coworking facility so I don't have to WFH. If this situation sucks, there's a real chance I'll be changing jobs later this year because of this.
I pretty much dislike WFH and for many of the reasons you mention and more, so took a local in-office job last year after being at home since COVID. I was excited to return to a more social environment until I found that "the office" itself was itself entirely problematic. Cheapass flatpack desks all rammed in together. No noise or sound proofing, giant sweatshop room. Sub-par monitors and equipment generally. Grumpy coworkers complaining constantly about the very conversations (both on-topic and off-topic/non-work) that I came in to have a chance to experience again.
And half the staff was just WFH anyways, or remote, so the collaboration opportunities... diminished.
I even saw this happening at Google before I left there, which had formerly been a ... luxury office. Packing people in like sardines, forcing people to "reserve" desks. Bad parking and/or transit situations.
I get it when employers face financial or real estate crunches. But in the last 10-15 years (I've been working for 30) -- even pre-COVID -- I feel like some switch went off in tech industry leadership brains that is just outright disrespectful. Paying high salaries to engineers and then providing them with uncomfortable accommodations. Makes little sense to me.
I'm back to WFH and the isolation that comes with it. In part because the office environment was actually not what I was hoping for. Because the industry ruined it.
> No noise or sound proofing, giant sweatshop room
My kingdom for an office with a ceiling, lmao. The exposed ductwork cheap-ass offices are so awful.
As an old guy who used to make fun of them for their sterility when I was young...
I'd just like cubicles back.
If you genuinely "thrive" more in person then go live next to your office. No point sitting in a 30-60 minute commute. America/UK took the brunt of the cost transitioning towards knowledge work, but kept the costs of manufacturing (shipping people around). Even if it's slightly more productive, the cost is externalized on the workers making them poorer and sickly.
>Oh no you don't understand I need a compress decompress cycle I TRIVE when I burn as much gas as possible
Sadly, your job (especially in the games industry) is a lot more mobile that your living dwellings. I had a housing situation and took the commute over trying to move.
It's bad for the EcOnOmY, less wear and tear in cars, less jobs for mechanics, less gas consumed, less lunch bought in fast food chain, &c.
The entire system is designed around making the numbers go up, not down
Yep. The broken window fallacy and the tragedy of the commons*, darkening the future of basically every vertebrate on the planet.
* A solved problem, btw.
In the end cars are just a means to an end. People want to minimize their transportation spending.
People bought bigger houses or renovated. They upgraded their PCs and were more likely to subscribe to broadband and less likely to cancel. Empty office buildings are ever so slowly being converted to housing. Professional clothing purchases dipped and then rebounded.
> is well loved by everyone who participates (except management)
Most of management hates it too. I manage a team where everyone is remote, yet I have to go to the office few days a week to sit on zoom, why? And up a level, my manager has an even longer commute and probably hates it more than I do.
This stuff is pushed down by HR, most of management hates it.
and if you're talking to somebody who doesn't care about climate change just substitute "climate change" with "traffic"
In my experience, everybody cares about climate change. A lot of people just don't like the idea of caring about climate change.
But ya, probably best to just call it "traffic" then, and they might be more receptive.
Yeah, I've always seen it as a hot potato issue. I think a lot of people who don't play ball on dealing with climate change aren't deniers, they just want the next guy to have to do the work. It's very, very hard to sell to anyone, "this is going to be incredibly costly and painful for you and you won't enjoy any of the benefits. Your grandkids might."
I think we saw during covid that we most certainly can see the benefits in our lifetime if we took it more seriously.
Agreed. I care enough about it to sell my car, stop buying stuff I don't need, give up most meat, and live in a small energy efficient house.
However I do know people who really do not care. They may say they care but their actions and voting record show that in fact they don't care (or don't want to make it a real priority). But those same people get very upset when they're stuck in traffic
Absolutely not. There are tens of millions of Americans who have jumped full speed onto the "It's not even happening" train, let alone the "It's actually a good thing because plants" or "It's not our fault" or "We can't fix it so we shouldn't try" or "It's too expensive to fix and I can't do long term math" trains.
And this is a massive reversion too. In the mid 2000s republicans were openly advocating that we needed to do something about climate change and that it was a serious problem and then we opened the cash floodgates to American federal politics and would you look at that, oil companies have a lot of cash.
Keep in mind that the real cost of transitioning is very likely to be less than what we spent on the stupid oil wars of the 2000s. We can literally afford it now, let alone if we hadn't burned all that cash bombing the desert because of oil politics.
Oil companies themselves are fine to be "Energy" companies and invest in Solar and other renewables. They will be profitable just fine. Our country is tearing itself apart over a lie to ensure they remain more profitable.
In 2008 McCain openly talked about greenhouse gas cap and trade. I think the driving force behind it was fear of peak oil. Secure your energy supply. With fracking supply concerns went away.
In the mid-2000s there might've been individual Republicans concerned about climate change, but it was the Bush administration who opposed the Kyoto Protocol and pushed for adaptation to climate change on the basis of protecting the economy.
WFH was great to begin with, but as somebody living alone, the isolation starts to have an effect after a while when you're 'working alone' too
And for many people WFH has other problems - if you're a dual-WFH couple in a small home, lack of home office space is a very real problem. (Although if WFH was a permanent thing, many people could choose less expensive places to live, and have more space)
Still, anything to eliminate a miserable and environmentally wasteful commute.
> And for many people WFH has other problems - if you're a dual-WFH couple in a small home, lack of home office space is a very real problem. (Although if WFH was a permanent thing, many people could choose less expensive places to live, and have more space)
Sure I get meetings you need to go to separate rooms, but how is the rest is different from a regular open office? Oh no, my co-working space has the person I like to spend time with?
Meetings aren't infrequent for many jobs. As well, small homes may not have the desired desk space for multiple full-time offices.
Sounds like whoever is scheduling meetings need to adapt to a new asynchronous environment whereas many meetings isn't necessary.
I'm not saying everyone must be WFH or that everyone must have a home office. I'm just having hard time imagining how two people cannot WFH in a 1-bedroom apartment. Unless both of them work in a call center.
> Sounds like whoever is scheduling meetings need to adapt to a new asynchronous environment whereas many meetings isn't necessary.
I agree, and a lot of my 'participation' in these meetings these days is read the papers, write my opinion, attach it to the documents and tell people I'm not attending.
That said we're 5 years in to this thing and people haven't adapted.
I would love to have a coworking-space-on-every-block (or in every building) where all the WFHers can go to be around other people (just not the coworkers)
Everyone is paying for wework to do what their branch library can probably do for them.
Only issue is that my libraries close 5pm on weekends and 7pm on weekdays. Nothing for night owls.
If there would be enough demand to pay for it, it would stay open longer.
The libraries in my city get paid by membership. That's not exactly visits, but a correlated proxy.
Also if it would become really crowded they would probably think of prolonging opening hours.
They could be!
Here's a line from my local library's site:
> Our auditoriums are provided as a public service for use by individuals, institutions, groups, organizations, and corporations for a small fee, when not being used for library-affiliated or sponsored activities.
Yeah, I was spoiled by my college town. Libraries open until 2AM, a 24 hour space for students. Even a few cafes downtown open 24 hours a day. Suburb life is mostly fine, but that's one thing I miss most.
Gotta travel 20 miles to downtown for anything resembling night life.
And maybe we can pool them a bit by profession, because they often need the same tools and can help each other. Any maybe they can even work on some of the same projects, so we can remove meetings.
I don't see how that's necessary at all. All the arguments that WFH might be a good idea in the first place would still hold.
A place where We all work. Call it a WeWork maybe.
I agree, 2 days a week in office is optimal. If they could coordinate which days to reduce traffic then... holy cow dream world.
> costs nothing
1. for other businesses and jobs though, people staying at home costs a lot. one can call it a polarizing option.
2. these kind of jobs are likely prime candidates for AI already.
We may never know which sector of the economy you are in to believe WFH is a good idea unless you explicitly state it but given this is HN, I'm just going to make a lazy assumption for software dev or engineering. WFH sounds great in theory only if _everyone_ participates in it but is hardly the case in reality.
For example: If you can sustainably and reliably source your daily necessities like having the ability to cook or maintain a decent home environment that support it, kudos. Thought the covid lockdowns showed us how fragile that system can be especially for those _essential people_ to be physically around to feed you or keep your shit running.
As a side note: how do you feel about being snookered by your local government's policy under the pretext that _essential work_ just gives your employers the ability to maintain the same minimum wage labor cycle just so you can feel giddy about how good this idea is?
Don't forget about holders of commercial real estate debt and the owners of commercial real estate and restaurants who depend on foot traffic!
Except driving in the U.S. following the pandemic was significantly higher than driving before the pandemic even though WFH was much higher.
This claim might be true but it’s simply not showing up in the data which suggests that even if true, the effect is probably minor.
but then again, vehicle miles travelled per-capita has been mostly increasing in the US since as far back as 1975. There could be a lot of confounding factors. Like astronomical housing prices in urban areas forcing people live very far away and incur more VMT at a faster rate than WFH decreases VMT. I'm no expert here, I'm just spitballing.
WFH doesn't actually stop driving. They don't commute, but they do run errands and other stuff during the day. This can actually result in more traffic during high peak periods since it can cause congestion build up to start earlier
Because people didn't go back to taking transit
I think the bigger point was that pandemic traffic immediately showed effects. Smog cleared up in Los Angeles in less than a month.
But no, it won't ever be that level without major infrastructure change. Not all jobs can be wfh. We can get close by a major public transportation overhaul, but that will take decades (even without the inevitable pushback).
> is well loved by everyone who participates (except management).
So? The only people who matter are shareholders and their proxies (management). To everyone else: you don't matter as much as you think you do, quit being selfish and be happy you get anything at all. The world doesn't revolve around you.
Being against WFH because 'think of the shareholders' is certainly a take.
The world might not revolve around me, but thankfully, I do get a vote in who I chose to work for, and I chose an employer that lets me work remote.
I sure don't nowadays. My industry is in free fall.
> is well loved by everyone who participates
You don't speak for me :)
I hate it.
Wfh is debatable, but what's not to love about 4 day work weeks? 8t gives you even more time to work on your own stuff if you still want to work.
I was only replying to the part about WFH. Four day weeks would be great.
I love WFH but how is it a win climate change solution for anyone outside of the USA? If my office building WFH, instead of heating a building we need to heat 500 people homes all day. And most of the people commute by public transport.
Vast majority of people are not touching their thermostat much at all when going to the office.
But these are stupid made up arguments. WFH or not both the homes with no one in them and the offices with no tenants are getting heated still to keep the pipes from bursting.
So 500 people leave for office and turn off the heating at their homes, even if there are other people (kids, elderly) or animals (cats, dogs, birds) living there?
Kids are at school during office hours, I'm not sure about pets but they I don't think they care whether the house is 23° or 16° considering most of them go outside without any issue.
How is their commute relevant? If they are WFH, theres less people needing to commute. Thats less fuel or more efficient fuel economy for public transport to use
Yes but we are offsetting their lack of commute (being public transport, a small impact anyway) with having to heat many more houses.
Most energy goes into making up for the temperature delta. If you turn the heating down, the delta at either evening or morning goes up.
Note, some people even think that would take even more energy in total per day, but that's not correct because a cooler house doesn't emit as much energy as a warmer one.
I would hazard a guess that (x houses @ minimal heating + x amount of petrol burned during a commute + emissions from heating an office) > whatever amount of emissions x houses would generate going from minimal heating to comfortable heating.
It's too bad that countries only consider things like this to address a crisis in fuel costs. Why not enact measures like this to curb the pollution and CO2? I guess it says a lot about what humanity truly values.
We saw how much less pollution there was during the pandemic
https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2020/03/04/8110190...
I worked from home but a few times I needed to go to my parents house during what used to be rush hour. Less than 5% of normal traffic and fuel demand dropped so much that prices were lower.
My job went hybrid in 2022 and then return to office full time last year. Everyone hates it. It's a waste of time and resources.
Less pollution, less traffic means we don't need to use tax revenue to expand roads and less wear and tear means less repairs.
Take it one step further and give tax breaks to businesses that let employees work from home and close physical offices. Then this means less new office construction which can be used for housing to help the housing crisis. It's a win win for everyone except control freak managers.
The visibility in socal was astounding at the time. Like 50 mile days, catalina and the san gabriels both crystal clear.
Some believe that few organizations are actually real-estate businesses masquerading as tech, restaurant or other types.
For those kind of business having full occupancy is more important than worker productivity.
One is an immediate impact in your pocket, the other one has an impact lag that you count in years/decades.
Because the economic activity which generates pollution and CO2 also raises standards of living and provides for the needs of their societies?
Let me guess, you live in the West and don't need to worry about your family's basic needs being met?
Global climate change will make much of the world barely habitable, and devastate crop yields. Those living outside "the West" will far and away be the most adversely affected. Reducing CO2 emissions is an urgent global priority.
[flagged]
Most high-quality climate models have been if anything overly conservative in their predictions and things have been going at a much accelerated rate. So which doomsday models can you point to that have not materialized?
I don't understand where that comes from. So you are saying the climate is not changing rapidly while people who studied it all say it does?
Mollusks in the ocean are producing shells slower because of the increase in carbonic acid. Nighttime temperatures are observably higher in the tropics.
You're say things that even climate denialists aren't claiming are true.
[flagged]
No it doesn't. That economoic activity when done from home, raises their local neighborhoods now where mom and pop businesses can thrive instead of competing in a costly rental market based on scarcity.
> don't need to worry about your family's basic needs being met?
So... Office workers commuting every day create food to put on people's table?
Ah yes, because economics and resource allocation are already perfectly optimal and balanced, and it is against the physical laws of the universe to raise quality of life via any other methodology
Optimizing performance management and labor cost controls is more important to those making these decisions than climate change. Misaligned incentives.
"Leave the petro-billionaires alone!" Seems to be the driving force
Imagine if the world had aggressively invested in renewables at any time in the past ten years!
Cheap and efficient solar power didn't seem to require any actual breakthroughs or real investment. Maybe better power electronics for inverters and things? Batteries are a real issue but storage could have been totally ignored for a while.
So, maybe when Carter put those (thermal) solar collectors on the White House we should have thrown a hundred billion dollars at solar panel work and had abundant solar power decades ago.
But no, Carter was "weak" so we had to instead elect the guy who ignored AIDS because he hated gay people, pushed absurd drug policy, put us in bed with the middle east, and started the process of removing taxes from any rich person and racking up national debt for stupid reasons.
Why was Carter "weak"? Well you see, Iran was a huge Bad Guy that we needed to stop!
Oh.
Politicians only think of their donors. Every country has an oligarchy who controls oil and gas. So for their wealth, we all have to suffer.
South Asia is suffering like anything right now. There is an cooking gas shortage. In some countries there is a petrol shortage.
But nobody will learn lessons from this crisis and focus to switch to renewables within a decade.
> Why not enact measures like this to curb the pollution and CO2?
It does seem like a glaring contradiction, but it's actually not. In the West, at least, climate rhetoric is a tool primarily to discipline and control the masses through fear, with actual concern for the climate a distant secondary factor. This is why those elites can cry crocodile tears for the environment while also riding on private jets to private islands and staying mum about intentional environmental disasters caused in the ongoing wars (which they support, of course).
In the current fuel crisis, mandatory WFH is also an attempt to manage populations through controlled demand-destruction, which avoids more volatile forms of demand-destruction that result in unrest, like not being able to afford food.
From an (cynical) governance perspective, there is no contradiction here.
You can’t collapse countries and humans down to four sentences and conclude that’s what they value. Do you want to analyze the problem or throw quips at the wall?
I wish we’d all go to four day work weeks.
Over My whole life, 5 out of 7 full days of work always felt so daunting and almost dehumanizing.
But 4/7 is mentally close to half and just feels way different qualitatively. If you have a job you mostly like, 4 days a week feels really sustainable.
I work 4 days a week (started because of a medical condition) and I think more people should do that. I even think that in those 4 days i get as much done as most others in 5 days because I can focus better, and sometimes when I feel like working in the non-work day I work a few hours for fun and interest.
I‘m a big fan of the four day workweek idea, but let’s not kid ourselves. 5 days are 5 days. I work 10h days usually and I just wouldn’t be able to fit all that work into 4 days.
I don't think human production is linear. There's definitely an optimal point, and it probably varies from person to person. I think, actually, past that point your productivity declines rapidly.
I would not be surprised at all if working 70 hours a week yields more productivity than 80, which yields more than 100.
That’s because you actually work 6 days a week.
Perhaps you should split the load with another human?
I've been working 4/10 schedule (4 days, but 10 hours/day, so I still work 40 hours). It's a HUGE perk, and is the biggest thing keeping me at my current job.
Honestly I think the dirty secret is most peoples work output, especially in white collar work, is not linear. I'm willing to bet if you are even able to quantify your output (I don't believe most people can do that unless they are merely a fungible cog in some production process), you'd get the same exact amount of work done in a year working 4 10s or 4 8s or 4 5s I'd even bet.
Think of the classic case of the deadline and what it actually means. Case A, you didn't procrastinate. You took plenty of time to think on the problem, work on a solution at an unhurried pace, put it aside, come back to it, and solve it before it is due. And then, it is done.
Case B, you did procrastinate. You have no time at all to think all day, you immediately do and iterate. Four hours later you've sprinted and delivered. And then, it is done, same as it would have been if you didn't procrastinate, maybe 10 fold reduction in time.
And that is worst case examples. Typical case is probably somewhere between these A and B, but the point is non linear time to output.
You just discovered Amazon and startup work culture, work at a frantic pace! But why work frantically for 4 days instead of 5?
Happiest and most productive I've ever been was working 4/10 with a start time at 2 p.m. No morning sluggishness walking into work after lunch, zero-traffic commute, off Fridays so I'd still have a social life far, far away from morning people. Dated a nurse who also worked night shifts and just went on weekday lunch dates or closed down bars.
Care to share how you snagged that?
