Carbon offsets for Second Life avatars or internet use?

From the KM4DEV list, an interesting post from Urs Karl Egger, of Swiss Resource Centre and Consultancies for Development:

The Web 2.0 that connects so nicely people all over the world in an allegedly environmental friendly way seems to have a downside as well.

According to a newsletter of a Swiss IT magazine, the amount of data in the Internet doubles every four months. YouTube alone produces obviously as much traffic as the whole Internet two years ago. Not only all the home and office PC but also server farms need huge amounts of electricity. For Second Life alone 4000 servers are needed, and according to Nicolas Carr each avatar in Second Life needs more power than a real human being in Brasil. The production of electricity for the Internet produces reportedly more CO2 than the whole air traffic…

I haven’t done any digging on this myself yet to confirm the facts, but it would be interesting to hear what others think.

How much will you be willing to pay in Linden dollars for carbon offsets for running your avatar?

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