Working From Home: The Secret to Winning the War on Terror?

. . . to say nothing of helping reduce greenhouse gasses and slowing global climate change.

Actually, I'm convinced we're getting closer and closer to the day when working at home at least part-time will be just "the way we are." We may even find ourselves feeling sorry for people who "have" to commute to an office in a center city (I already feel that way; I thank myself every day for opting to become self-employed and home-office-based).

Thanks to Richard Grunburg of Home2Office, I just came across a new study suggesting that telecommuting could cut our dependence on foreign oil in half ("Telecommuting Can Half U.S. Gulf Oil Dependency" - reported on PR-USA.net).

The actual study was conducted by researchers Kate Lister and Tom Harnish and first reported on their blog, Undress4Success.com

I've been saying essentially the same thing for a long time - if everyone could work from home just two days a week we'd cut our gasoline consumption by close to 40% (of course, not all trips are commuting ones - we do have to go to the store, the bank, and so on, and we do use our cars for pleasure trips on weekends, etc.).

What impresses me about the Lister/Harnish study is that they've actually looked at real data, and taken into consideration the reality that plenty of commuters can't work from home because their jobs require their physical presence (think barbers, restaurant clerks, construction workers, police and fire workers, etc.). Even with that reality, the data are staggering. From the PR-USA report:

. . . telework could reduce Gulf oil imports by 24 to 48%, reduce greenhouse gases by up to 67 million metric tons a year, and save as much as 7.5 trillion gallons of gasoline each year—a savings $110 million a day.

[snip]

Research shows that 40% (almost half) of the U.S. workforce hold jobs that are suitable for telework. If they were allowed to work from home these teleworkers would collectively avoid 154 trillion miles of driving and save $25 trillion in fuel purchases, even accounting for mileage for errands formerly accomplished driving to or from work.

There's more in the PR-USA article, and more still at the Undress4Success blog. I encourage you to visit both sites.

More importantly, let's figure out how to make it happen. Just imagine the impact on our foreign policy and homeland security if we aggressively added telecommuting to all the current efforts to produce fuel-efficient cars and trucks. I'm fond of pointing out that the most fuel-efficient car is the one sitting in your garage with the engine turned off. How about policies focused on reducing the number of miles we drive, not just the miles per gallon of those we do? (Actually, as I understand it, the general result of higher-mileage vehicles is that people drive more miles, so it's kind of a wash. So reducing miles driven may be the only way to achieve significant reductions in oil consumption.)

Update: I missed the in-depth report from Undress4Success when I first posted this earlier today. The link to the full analysis is here: "Telecommuters Tell Gulf Oil to Pound Sand."

And by the way, there's lots of other great data and information about telecommuting at the Undress4Sucess website. I heartily recommend it.