Reduce global warming with a four-day workweek

Less work and more free time can reduce carbon emissions

I’ve been reading a lot lately on climate change solutions—rooftop solar panels, electric vehicles, vegetarian diets, and more. I support them all. But the one idea that has got me the most excited recently is reducing emissions with a four-day workweek.

Admittedly, driving an electric car sounds neat. No pumping gas and no oil changes. And I already kinda sorta eat a plant-based diet, eschewing meat for most of my meals. But think of it, working just four days a week. Doesn’t that sound great? We would all have three-day weekends every week! That’s even without having Presidents’ Day or Labor Day. And we could have three-day weekends not only because we deserve them (and don’t let anybody tell you different. We all do.), but because the entire planet could benefit from our working a bit less.

Last year, Tyler Grange, a landscape planning, ecology and arboriculture consulting firm in Great Britain, tried a four-day workweek pilot program. To their surprise, they found their employees’ daily productivity rose by 22 percent. More importantly, they saw a 21 percent reduction in miles traveled by car. A trial in the United States suggests an even greater reduction.

The Easybeats sing that Monday they have Friday on their minds. The song would sound the same and be just as good if they dreamed of Friday starting on Tuesday.

Tyler Grange also found an unanticipated benefit of the shorter workweek: keeping the company computers quiet for an extra day reduced electricity use, resulting in carbon savings. Most of that reduction came from fewer emails and data updates, which can use more electricity than we realize. One big data storage center can use the same amount of electricity as 50,000 homes. Fewer database updates can keep our planet cool. And every time you refrain from hitting “Send,” you’re saving the planet.

When I was a child, indulging my dream of the future while watching The Jetsons, there were predictions that our ingenuity and machines would pay off and we would all be working for only four days a week. But economics and the desire for more things instead of more leisure put the kibosh on that idea. Women’s participation in the workforce has also increased. Overall, this means more people doing more work. Maybe the time for a four-day workweek is long past due.

How we got to eight and forty

Work has been part of human existence since just about forever. When Adam and Eve broke God’s command and ate the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, God cursed Eve with the pains of childbirth and Adam with the drudgery of work. (Since women began working outside the home, you might think they are doubly cursed.)

Dolly will tell you, “They got you where they want you, 9 to 5,” but what if that is just one day less every week?

But work as we think of it today, 40 hours a week for most folks, many, many more for a lot of engineers, doctors, managers, and others, is a product of the industrial age. Before the Industrial Revolution, people didn’t work such long hours. Anthropologists have found that people living in the few remaining hunter-gatherer societies—a way of life universal to human existence before the dawn of agriculture about 10,000 years ago—spend about 15 hours a week gathering and hunting for food, with their housework taking an additional 15 to 20 hours a week. Children in these societies have fewer chores and more time to play.

Even after the Agricultural Revolution, work did not dominate the lives of our ancestors. Medieval peasants worked about 20 hours per week. I am reminded of the character Levin in Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, who worked from sunup to sundown when he joined the peasants during harvest, so I’m guessing that the 20 hours is an average, with lots of work during planting and harvesting and times in between when less work was done.

The Vogues sing of a five o’clock word. They might like to sing their song just four days a week.

When we first harnessed the energy in fossil fuels to power steam engines, automobiles, and just about everything else in our modern world, the general assumption was that people would be working less. Instead, we began working more. Before the reforms that gave us the eight-hour work day, factory laborers might work 14 to 16 hours per day, six days a week. It took the efforts of thousands of Progressives and the diligence of labor unions, campaigning for years, to bring the workload down to eight hours a day and 40 hours per week.

A three-day weekend will take some doing

Fortunately, this climate solution won’t require new infrastructure. We won’t have to build off-shore wind-generating stations; we won’t have to install solar panels or build electric car-charging stations. We just have to start a four-day workweek. We could do it today.

Importantly, our pay has to stay the same. If the expected increases in productivity hold up as in the Tyler Grange study, this should be no problem. Besides, productivity has risen consistently without compensation to the workers responsible for that increase. Maybe it’s time for a functional raise: same pay, fewer hours. Saving the planet while supporting the workforce—what could be more climate- and people-friendly?

I don’t think we can start showing up for work on Tuesdays and think our managers will give us their blessing. And Joe Biden can’t instigate a shorter workweek by signing an Executive Order. Like the Progressives and labor unions before us, we are going to have to push for it. Like most reforms, it will probably have to start at state levels. You can help this push by writing your state senators and representatives. Email your governor, too. Writing to your senators and representatives in Washington may not do much right now, but it couldn’t hurt.

If you belong to a union, that would be a good place to start organizing for a four-day workweek. A vibrant national organization, something like Mothers for a Four-Day Workweek, would practically guarantee that most Mondays we would be seeing each other at the park instead of in our cubicles. Let’s do this! Say so long to blue Mondays and hello to a great climate change solution!

And just for you folks who finished this Substack post to the very end, Takin’ Care of Business!