The paper[1] goes into this in more depth. COVID was definitely a factor, but not the only one. For example if you look at the YOY comparisons, both halves of 2021 hadlower emissions YOY than 2020. The H1 decrease you can blame on the COVID lockdowns that lasted until May. But by July 2020 everyone who was going to WFH was WFH, and by July 2021 many people who were WFH in 2020 were commuting again.

[1]: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.est.3c09642

ICE cars are also more efficient and less poluting, which could also account for some of the decline.

the study accounts for shelter-in-place mandates during COVID: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.est.3c09642

I have been surprised that environmental activists haven't protested return-to-office policies for the incident increase in pollution. Seems like there is very little data backing up RTO other than commercial real estate sunk costs, and loads of costs like lost time commuting, energy used to commute, emissions due to traffic, etc.

I know of one huge international pharma company with a site in South SF that is reducing conference attendance with the stated purpose of reducing emissions, while simultaneously requiring all employees to be on-site 3 days a week regardless of job function (yes, lab workers have to be in the lab for their work, but plenty of positions spend most of their time on video calls with other sites in Sweden, Netherlands, England, China, India...)

Wasn't this one of the reasons behind the Amazon walkouts

Do executive feelings count as data

the lack of resistance to RTO from many political perspectives has been stunning tbh

Wfh sure seems like a negative in terms of measured economic activity - less gas buying, fewer coffee and lunch purchases and happy hours, and or course depressed commerical real estate, all leading to lower tax in take. Happy to see the political upside.

the upside is its better for workers and the climate lol it also reduces the spread of COVID-19, which is an ongoing pandemic.

At first I was for cars with higher MPG.

Then I was for more mass transit.

Finally I realized it'd be cheaper to move work closer to where we built houses for the peons to live instead of close to where the boss lives.

Nothing closer than a home office.

Don't ruin it for me!

I only read the headline and was feeling justified purchasing 3000 pounds of globally mined steel, aluminum, rubber, plastic, graphite, copper, nickel, manganese and cobalt.

You can feel good. the carbon debt from manufacturing is amortized over the life of the car. As long as the car is driven more than 19,000 miles, EVs are better.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/19/business/electric-vehicle...