Although work from home reduces traveling to the office, transportation only accounts for about 15% of greenhouse gas emissions. A bigger contributor of global green house gas emissions is power generation, which we’re still doing plenty of.
Every bit helps, but if we want to have serious reductions in greenhouse gas emissions we’ll have to make significant infrastructure changes. Behavioral and policy changes alone will not sufficiently address climate change.
https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Greenhouse_Gas_by_...
In California, it is something like 40% of emissions.
These percentages are going to increase quickly, as renewable generation is now cheaper than other types of electricity generation in most markets, and prices are plummeting like a rock.
The same can't be said for electric car prices, nor EV adoption rates.
I think land use changes that permit transit are by far the most important infrastructure changes to reduce emissions. However even in California efforts to change this over the past three years (SB827, SB50) have met a brick wall of resistance, despite widespread acceptance climate action and desire for better transit.
Transportation GHG emission rates are going to be far far harder to change than power generation emissions.
The pie chart I posted is a global chart. US GHG emissions are significant, but they are not the majority source.
Regardless, individual action and decisions of minor institutions (such as businesses changing policies to allow work from home) are necessary, but are not sufficient to make significant reductions in GHG emissions. Land use changes are a good example of the types of changes needed.
Even if it doesn't cut down emissions so much (and electric cars are very good at that too), it does make a lot of difference for the daily traffic jams. If we could reduce those, it would be of great benefit.
Every bit helps, but if we want to have serious reductions in greenhouse gas emissions we’ll have to make significant infrastructure changes. Behavioral and policy changes alone will not sufficiently address climate change. https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Greenhouse_Gas_by_...