this post was submitted on 05 Sep 2023
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There are theories about climate lockdowns to slow down pollution seeing how well it worked during Covid unintentionally. Personally I would froth for a periodic lockdown where everyone stayed home and chilled
I once lived in a city that had a by-law where all businesses were closed on Sunday. At first I found the law annoying, but honestly those super quiet Sundays really grew on me.
When I went to Tuscany there were places I visited with half day work hours and Sunday everything was closed. People just enjoyed life, not needing to shop, but just living. I crave a society like this.
That was pretty much everywhere in my province until the late 90s or so...
Take that corporate bailout and PPP loan money to fund buses and highspeed rail, mandatory WFH in jobs that are able to implement it, heavy fines for violation. Bing bang boom a whole bunch of cars just got taken off the street and bought us slightly more time to unfuck ourselves
Tbh, I really enjoyed the lockdowns. We have young children and I got to spend so much time with them. I got much closer to them than I ever could have without covid. Was stressful though my wife and I had to work in shifts, so that one of us could be with the children, so long days.
But now they are in school and I think lockdowns are not that great for young school-children. So, I am undecided. Maybe a lock down excluding schools up to year 8 or so.
School buses are a thing, and no one would disagree with that I'd think.
Oh, I live in Germany. My children walk or go by kick scooter. :) But yes, I hope so.
Lockdowns provided short term relief for reducing GHG but later bounced back to pre-COVID levels [1]
[1] https://climate.nasa.gov/news/3129/emission-reductions-from-pandemic-had-unexpected-effects-on-atmosphere/
Long term we need to improve the efficiency at the source (power generation) and get rid of O&G dependency. In addition, transform cities to become less car dependent (the microplastics from ICE/EV based cars tire wear is not good) Also Western diets have to change (reduced meat consumption).
I do like the idea of keeping WFH as an option though. The mandatory RTO sentiment of C-level executives is annoying to say the least and data is not backing up their reasoning. Keep an office for the people that prefer it and reduce the office footprint. Gather data over time and let teams and team leaders decide.