{"id":8473,"date":"2019-05-24T12:07:03","date_gmt":"2019-05-24T11:07:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.theoillamp.co.uk\/?p=8473"},"modified":"2019-05-24T12:07:03","modified_gmt":"2019-05-24T11:07:03","slug":"one-thing-learnt-week-ecological-limits-work","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theoillamp.co.uk\/?p=8473","title":{"rendered":"One thing we have learnt this week – The ecological limits of work"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"2016-09-14-17-16-48\"<\/a>The ecological limits of work is not something I’ve ever considered much.\u00a0 I imagine my surprise yesterday when I read an article with a headline saying we are going to have to reduce our hours of work to 9 per week to “save the planet”.\u00a0 The Ecological Limits of Work is the title of a report just out from a think tank called Autonomy whose mission is to think about the future of work.<\/p>\n

The first question which I have considered a little bit on this blog in the past is would cutting the hours of work or even work from home cut emissions?\u00a0 As we covered a bit in a our book<\/a> there is an economic theory called the rebound effect.\u00a0 This states that energy efficiency savings in one area are more than wiped out by the change in another area.\u00a0 So in this case if working hours are drastically reduced the person might travel more and in winter uses loads of heating.\u00a0 There isn’t much research in this area but such that there is suggests the savings are small.\u00a0 For a 1% reduction in work time the green house gas (GHG) cuts are in the range of 0\u00b78% – 0\u00b742%.\u00a0 Hence the drastic hours figures.\u00a0 This does suggest the Jevons paradox as the above idea is more formally known, might be in play here.\u00a0 Its also true that 1% isn’t much and you still have to (in most cases get still physically get there).<\/p>\n

The authors of the report come up with a different way.\u00a0 Its elegant and relatively simple.\u00a0 To keep global temperature rises to below 2\u00b0C (and its arguable it should be below 1.5\u00b0C) then every person on the planet can emit 1.6 tonnes of carbon.\u00a0 This method assumes a proportional relationship between labour time and GHG emissions.\u00a0 Knowing the total GHG emissions per unit of GDP and using this the figure of GDP per capita that would be sustainable you can do some calculations.\u00a0 Dividing this figure by the productivity in an economy gives you the number of hours that would be sustainable.\u00a0 This for some leading OECD countries is 100-200 hours a year.\u00a0 The authors then slightly loose me.\u00a0 They do another calculation on how the labour is used.\u00a0 For example how many students work part time and how many holidays are there in a year.\u00a0 This is where for the UK they come up with the number of hours we could work is 9.\u00a0 It has to be said, its not many more hours for other economies either.<\/p>\n

So where are we?\u00a0 The authors do give a nod to the Jevons paradox.\u00a0 They do admit the cut in hours in of itself would not be sufficient.\u00a0 What they don’t do is look at the acceptability of this and how people’s lifestyle would be funded.\u00a0 I’m a big support of a citizens income (search this site) but the money for this has to come from somewhere.\u00a0 If everyone works just a few hours a week without automation then you’ve pretty much shut the conventional economy down (something I don’t in principle have an issue with).\u00a0 Automation is not really mentioned.\u00a0 There is also the problem of making this socially acceptable.\u00a0 As someone who still struggles with underemployment, getting people to work a few hours a week could be difficult.\u00a0 Very few in society want to sit around doing nothing.\u00a0 One solution might be to work full time for a few months of the year and have the rest of the time off (this would be more productive anyway).\u00a0 Also under this theory the more sustainable we can make our economies the more we can work.\u00a0 A final thought.\u00a0 The whole area of work needs looking at urgently with not just the ecological threat but also the rise of automation.\u00a0 We need to have a big debate about work and come up with a fair plan that treats everyone equally.<\/p>\n

Neil<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The ecological limits of work is not something I’ve ever considered much.\u00a0 I imagine my surprise yesterday when I read an article with a headline saying we are going to have to reduce our hours of work to 9 per … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,20,17,15],"tags":[269],"class_list":["post-8473","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-climate-change","category-economics","category-one-thing-we-have-learnt-this-week","category-practical-low-carbon-living","tag-climate-change"],"yoast_head":"\nOne thing we have learnt this week - The ecological limits of work - The oil lamp - shining God's light on peak oil<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theoillamp.co.uk\/?p=8473\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"admin\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"3 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theoillamp.co.uk\/?p=8473\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theoillamp.co.uk\/?p=8473\",\"name\":\"One thing we have learnt this week - 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