Distributed Working & Telecommuting as a way to Reduce Global Warming

Shoshana Zuboff writes about how it is not enough to just speak about how we should develop alternate forms of energy, or how people should just use fewer resources and drive less. In order to affect a more drastic (and permanent) change to the way that we use our resources, some societal norms need to change to accommodate new working and living lifestyles. One of the main things that must change is the current normative practice of centralized working:

But the most compelling and far reaching response to the climate crisis is to bust up our current patterns of concentration. Distributing work is the most obvious piece of low hanging fruit. It’s a win in every direction. It will create more value–and wealth– because it reorients employees from organizational to individual space so they engage with customers, not each other. It’s one key to reducing overhead and restructuring costs, helping to make support widely affordable. And, it’s essential to a quantum shift in carbon emissions. In other words, it’s in the critical path of the new capitalism and the needs of our planet. Other dimensions of infrastructure can evolve quickly to complement new patterns of distributed work. The platforms already exist for new distribution systems that bring products and services to our homes. Rapid prototyping will enable small scale low energy production that occurs locally or even at home.

The solutions to climate crisis will not come from simply doing the old model– only less. Forcing more social competition over the shrinking pie of fossil fuels will destroy what’s left of our social fabric. Yes we need to develop alternate energy, but those innovations will be most effective in the context of a whole new distributed model for life and work. The two vectors of capitalism and climate are converging on this one idea: don’t reduce, distribute!

Read More on The Support Economy (found via The HR Lawyer’s Blog)