San Francisco passes work-from-home mandate to fight climate change | Hacker News Reader

San Francisco passes work-from-home mandate to fight climate change

nypost.com

21 pointsmrfusion10 comments

Headline is wrong, it's not San Francisco. From the NBCNews report:

> Metropolitan Transportation Commission, a regional government agency in the San Francisco Bay Area, voted Wednesday to move forward with a proposal to require people at large, office-based companies to work from home three days a week as a way to slash greenhouse gas emissions from car commutes.

Yeah this is just poor reporting by the NYPost. It looks like this mandate is part of a 30-year long range planning proposal. It doesn't appear there's any regional or municipal legislation or business impacts tied to this in the short-run.

No doubt we have our share of idiotic proposals in the Bay Area, but this is definitely a misleading headline.

Here's an article that offers more context and concerns from SF politicians on the plan: https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/Bay-Area-planni...

Also per the Chronicle article linked above: "The Plan Bay Area Blueprint for 2050 was shaped by online public feedback this year during the coronavirus pandemic. The plan is expected to be adopted by next summer, but any legal mandates on remote work would require future legislation."

I can't imagine that the MTC has the legal authority to do something like that.

Seems to me this regulation will have two very predictable outcomes:

1) For companies who want employee proximity, the companies will flee San Francisco 2) For companies who remain, the employees will flee San Francisco

Given that climate change is lower on a per capita basis the higher the population density and the economies of scale it offers, it seems this bill will have the exact opposite effect as to its intent.

I never understood this logic. Outsourcing energy, building materials, and food production doesn't absolve a metro of it's climate impact.

So, um, did SF just permanently end their commercial real-estate market?

Add this to the other interesting government initiatives launched in CA this week and you have to wonder why all businesses are not flocking to relocate to CA.

I'm confused. I doubt that the "Metropolitan Transportation Commission" has the power to enforce something like this.

This is insanity. How do they even have the authority to do this?

Just as I feared, the government has abused so-called "emergency measures" to exert an unprecedented level of control over Americans' lives. Give an inch and they'll take a mile.

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