With 20,000 RL people meeting in Copenhagen, Second Life is buzzing with chat about climate change at numerous events and ecology exhibits. I found some incredible rays of hope here in Second Life beyond the gloom and doom of global warming.Lately it's fashionable to be a climate change skeptic; I re-examined the science, starting with SL resources at NASA, NOAA, and EPA sims, and what I found is quite shocking. For brevity, I wrote a companion blog with all my notes and citations at: http://tiny.cc/T0p9f
I'll summarize what I discovered. The Earth is heating up steadily for the past century. A dramatic change happened to Earth around 1979; we broke the planet; 57% of human-caused carbon emissions persist in the atmosphere; Earth can't absorb it. Earth heating and greenhouse gases are accelerating, and mean temperatures are expected to rise 2 to 3 more Celsius degrees this century. Since seas rise as land ice melts at the exponential rate of temperature cubed, this is equivalent to a sea level rise of 21 to 41 meters (i.e. about 100 feet).
That would be bad. A 100 foot sea rise and concurrent storms would put under water 13 of the world's 15 largest cities, virtually all coastal settlements, and several nations (Holland, Bangladesh, Pacific Islands) would be mostly submerged. It is painfully obvious that this is not an option for humankind.
Now the hope. I met an amazing SL gentlemen, an exhibitor at OneClimate sim, who has wonderful hopeful ideas and SL freebies to share! Meme Autopoiesis is an environmental researcher at the RL Institute for Sustainable Communication. Meme says energy efficiency is a killer app; he told me examples and case studies about how computers, data centers, and electric power can be redesigned for great efficiency. Meme is most excited about Organic Light Emitting Diodes (OLED). OLEDs are a new fangled light source, made from organic compounds, in particular melanin, the biochemical that colors our RL skin. Melanin can be made from renewable plant resources. Cool to the touch because they are highly efficient, OLEDs can replace most of our energy hog plasma TVs, light bulbs, computer displays, and even printouts and newspapers.
Meme invites you down to OneClimate to pick up many colors of free Hopenhagen T-Shirts. Hopenhagen is an SL/RL campaign to give people a sense of hope and empowerment about climate change. RL Hopenhagen shirts are 100% recycled PET from plastic water and soda bottles. Most importantly, Meme wants you to sign the Hopenhagen Petition online at http://www.hopenhagen.org/ Over 1,700,000 people have signed it, "voicing support" for a successful Copenhagen conference.
But what can you really do to repair the Earth? Going Green campaigns are not enough; it's high time for political action. Get involved in Second Life, get informed, and become RL climate change activist. Meet inspiring eco-activists in SL at Better World, OneClimate, Africa Live, Ecologia, Etopia, and World Wildlife Fund. If US citizen, call, email, or write your Senator at http://senate.gov (SENATORS link). One letter to Congress counts as much as 1000 emails. In a nutshell, that's what I'd do. Every voice matters alot!
By Any1 Gynoid