Life 2.0 - As Green as Five Brazilian Households

A little more than a year ago, Nicholas Carr, author of "Does IT Matter?" and other influential books produced a back-of-the-envelope analysis of the environmental impact of Second Life. The relevant blog entry can be found here. His math shows that the average resident of Second Life consumes about as much energy, annually as the average citizen of Brazil. Subsequent math, by Sun's Dave Douglas, quoted on Carr's blog, converts this to the equivalent of about 1.17 tons of carbon, per avatar, per year.

As numerous SL bloggers were quick to note, of course -- all this really demonstrates is that "computers have a carbon footprint" (and establishes, I guess, the corollary fact that the average Brazilian isn't running a big-iron gaming PC ,24/7). In fact, as carbon emissions for various activities go, computers have a very small footprint -- radically small, by comparison with other, technically-enabled activities, like driving and flying and staying in hotels and keeping convention centers lit up and air-conditioned.

So I did my own back-of-the-envelope calculation, using Carr's same figures for server and PC wattage, and determined that our upcoming, six-day Life 2.0 Summit event -- with an average of 1000 concurrent attendees in SL and on the web -- will, over its 60-some-odd hours of "ontime," consume a total of about 9,048 KWh, which converts to roughly six tons of carbon. This is about 16% less carbon than one average American household releases in a year. (Or, I guess, about five average Brazilian households).

Let's compare this to the carbon footprint of a real event, which I calculated using the handy Excel spreadsheet at http://www.templerodefshalom.org/Copy%20of%20CarbonFootprintEventCalculator-v7%20(2).xls . Seems that, once all the fly, drive, taxi, light-up-the-convention-center, dispose of the trash, and watch pay-per-view-all-night-in-the-hotel-room stuff is added up (not sure what "hanging out in Second Life all night on the hotel's WiFi network" adds to this, but it's not much), a 1000-person national/global event in the real world will add something like 462 tons of carbon to the planet's burden. Yow.

This, I think, is a more important point -- that importing certain kinds of real-world activities into virtual reality saves a bagload of carbon. Or put another way, that it enables us to enjoy the benefits of global human community at small cost to the planet.

Interesting stuff -- this math was compelling enough that I've engaged with some experts to do a real analysis -- more later on results.