President Obama and tele-commuting

Posted on: August 4, 2010

Last month President Obama signed an order requiring the US government to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) from indirect sources by 13% over the next ten years. Indirect sources of the government’s carbon footprint include employee commuting, business travel, and GHG emissions from waste that is sent to landfills. To help achieve this goal, both the House and Senate recently approved bills that would greatly expand the use of tele-working in the federal civil service. 

An increase in tele-working amongst the 1.8 million US government employees (not even counting the Postal Service) would have a significant impact on reducing GHG emissions, which is a very good thing. Along with the decreased GHG emissions there are a number of other co-benefits, including decreased traffic congestion and smog, and reduced worker stress.

Yet President Obama’s lauding of the new tele-work initiative and carbon footprint reduction goals made me think of a blog post I wrote last year for Red Green and Blue. In this post I tried to estimate the carbon footprint of President Obama himself. While I stand by my sources and calculations, I now realize that I grossly underestimated the actual amount of air travel conducted by the President each year, and this is the greatest single contributor to his carbon footprint. My estimate of air miles travelled by Mr. Obama is probably about one-fifth of the actual amount (and possibly less). Thus my ballpark estimate of the President’s carbon footprint has to increase by 5 or 6 times, from 41,000 tonnes to about a quarter-million tonnes. This is the same as 80,000 civil servants (about 5% of the entire government workforce) using their cars for an entire year.

Given Mr Obama’s desire to reduce the US government’s indirect carbon footprint, I think it would be admirable of him to look for ways to reduce his own carbon footprint. As explained in my original column, I am not criticizing the massive security detail that accompanies the President whenever and wherever he moves. However, where Mr Obama could show some leadership in this area is reducing some of the hundreds of trips that are taken each year, especially the domestic trips that are simply for fundraising or stumping a Democratic candidate in an upcoming election. If Mr Obama could cut out a few of those trips and reduce his own carbon footprint by 13% like the rest of the US government is supposed to, that would mean a whopping 32 000 tonnes of GHG emissions would be avoided.

That is a big number – sure would be nice to see the President lead by example here.