Would you believe me if I told you that we could take a big step to combating climate change simply by staying home from work? Rather, I should say, staying home and working.

Call it “telecommuting.” Call it “virtual work.” Call it “working from home.” Call it “netWork.” I’m going to call it “telework,” and here’s how it could be both a key climate solution and also an incredible business boost.

Last year, I co-wrote a book called The Custom-Fit Workplace, which is about how everyone needs work that fits their life, and how employers are well-served to create a workplace that respects their workers lives. In doing so, they’re rewarded with more productive, resilient, and profitable businesses.

After the book was published, I was speaking with a small gathering of climate change leaders. During this chat I realized that one component of the “custom-fit work initiative” could well be the biggest short term opportunity we have to address climate change. This component is, of course, telework.

This morning my six-year-old snuggled next to me on the couch, an iPad on his lap open to a smurfs game app; the Wall Street Journal on my lap, headline blazing “Steven Paul Jobs, 1955-2011.” I lifted the paper up to show him the photo of Jobs and told him that the inventor of the iPad had died.

“Will they still make iPads, now that he’s away?” my son asked, concerned. I assured him that Jobs’ company would continue to build them. Silently he returned to his game.

To all the tributes today about Steve Jobs, his life, and his companies, I want to add a thank you for all that his innovative products have done for moms and kids. As a work-at-home writer and mother of four children, the iPad became my best friend when I was finishing my book, The Custom-Fit Workplace. Publishers demand quick turnarounds when a book is in its final stages of editing and production. Carrying an iPad everywhere when all four kids were on summer vacation enabled me to help it hit the bookstore shelves on schedule.

On the list of paradoxes, not many beat flying around the world to give talks about climate change. I can justify my carbon footprint if I have to–with myself as the main moving part, we’ve managed to build 350.org into the first big global climate campaign, organizing what CNN has called the “most widespread…political activity in the planet’s history.” If you want to be active in every country on earth except North Korea, you better be prepared to fly.

But I’d rather not justify it, and I’d rather not fly. So in recent years I’ve learned to tell an increasing number of the people who ask me to speak (about ten a day, most days) that the only way I can “be” there is via skype video. I sit in my kitchen, turn on my Macbook Pro, line up the camera, and when the moment comes I talk.  In this way I am able to say “Yes.” to speaking to a multiple of the people I could speak to if our only option was being physically present.

It’s not perfect. You don’t get the same kind of feedback from an audience that you do in person. I pride myself on trying to really communicate with audiences; something inherently falls away.

I recently met Ruth Martin from MomsRising.org at a work life policy panel discussion put on by the Younger Women’s Task Force: DC Chapter.  As I listened to Ruth talk about MomsRising and their grassroots efforts to bring greater work schedule flexibility to mothers, she quickly won my respect. In addition to her admirable work and accomplishments within the grassroots movement, Ruth is a mother that works from home, which means that Momsrising.org is an employer that practices what they preach. I am not a mother but I have one- and she has worked full-time since I was 8 weeks old. My father worked full-time as well so I grew up going to work with my mother (at a public library). Once I reached the age of 9 or 10, I graduated to latchkey kid. It’s not hard to see why Ruth’s message hit home for me and I immediately thought of a way that I could contribute.