Second Life is a very popular Massive Online Role-Playing Game that doesn’t involve orcs and warhammers. Apparently, because up to 15,000 people (‘Avatars’) are playing at any one time, it needs 4,000 servers continually running. Those servers use electricity, so that means an avatar has a carbon footprint. Journalist Nick Carr crunched the numbers:

…[A]n avatar consumes 1,752 kWh per year. By comparison, the average human, on a worldwide basis, consumes 2,436 kWh per year. So there you have it: an avatar consumes a bit less energy than a real person, though they’re in the same ballpark. Now, if we limit the comparison to developed countries, where per-capita energy consumption is 7,702 kWh a year, the avatars appear considerably less energy hungry than the humans. But if we look at developing countries, where per-capita consumption is 1,015 kWh, we find that avatars burn through considerably more electricity than people do. More narrowly still, the average citizen of Brazil consumes 1,884 kWh, which, given the fact that my avatar estimate was rough and conservative, means that your average Second Life avatar consumes about as much electricity as your average Brazilian.

Now some people are suggesting a carbon tax on electricity. If we use Sir Nicholas Stern’s figure of $85 worth of damages per ton of CO2, the average Second Life player should pay $140 to the government per year to account for his or her destructive geekery.