Sustainability Grrls

Avatar Action Center

by Surfdaddy Orca

Sage and Shannon Truss are unassuming avatars in Second Life (SL). But behind the jeans, t-shirts, and boots loom a couple of powerhouses. In real life, both women are VPs for technology and engineering organizations. On the side they are working on a hush-hush-on-the-QT project called Simmunity, a new virtual world architecture. But their collective power—and the power of their educational non-profit SL organization, the Avatar Action Center—comes from a passion for social and environmental consciousness, economic justice, and alternative energy utilization.

“I originally envisioned creating a fundraising organization that would raise money to support sustainability awareness projects in SL,” says Sage, chief fundraiser and founder of the Avatar Action Center. “The core group is about seven people, and we started supporting each other on projects.”

In SL, sustainability is often discussed in the context of maintaining traffic to a particular region or sim to keep it from becoming a “ghost sim.” Avatar Sitearm Madonna summarizes, “‘Good for the long haul’... that is what ‘sustainable design’ means in architecture, technology, arts and community.” The Avatar Action Center looks at sustainable design more from a real life global, ecological perspective. Check Merriam-Webster and you’ll find the word “sustain” comes from the Latin sustinere “to hold up” or “to nurture.” Says Sage, “Sustainability is the preservation and nurturance of diversity; the by-product of healthy, balanced (eco)systems.”

A good example of nurturing in the urban environment is Seattle’s Office of Sustainability and Environment - OSE. The OSE provides “leadership, tools, information and ideas to help City agencies, residents, households and businesses use natural resources efficiently, prevent pollution, and improve the economic, environmental, and social well-being of current and future generations.” One aspect of sustainability is promoting healthy and environment-friendly transportation choices, such as public transit, walking and biking, as well as cleaner vehicles and fuels. Motor vehicles are the number one source of air pollution and climate-warming greenhouse gas emissions in many cities—Seattle is no exception—and a major source of water pollution.

Surfdaddy met with Sage and Shannon Truss at the Avatar Action Center.

In SL, one locus of local, regional, and global sustainability is the Avatar Action Center. The Avatar Action Center may be the first nonprofit organization incubated in a virtual world to establish IRS 501(c)(3) status, a U.S. tax law provision granting exemption from the federal income tax to non-profit organizations. Sage explains, “Since there were a number of people interested in doing wind turbines, solar, and geothermal energy, and wave energy displays, we decided to initially go in the energy education direction.” She continues, “But we also started partnering with other organizations, like Clean Energy NOW, which had people passionate about peak oil and climate change.”

Solar House

The wind turbines are a dead giveaway. The SL Avatar Action Energy Center, built and managed by AAC member Dark Sequent, has virtual wind turbines, solar collectors, and a light- and heat-generating passive solar design.

Dark Sequent explains, “Sustainability is an awareness of the earth’s issues. Facilitating trust among people bringing about balance in all issues. Achieving a self-sustaining environment and to care for future energy resources.”

The Energy Center sits on a small parcel of land at Geometer (199, 242, 21) adjacent to the Avatar Action Amphitheater at Undulosa (218, 0, 21). The Amphitheater was the site of the Avatar Action Center’s first big event, Earth Day, when there were twelve hours of live performers mixed with talks on sustainability topics. Over 600 avatars attended during the course of the event, an excellent traffic metric for any SL region. Shannon Truss taught a popular course called Solar Home 101.

Inside the Energy Center, there are displays explaining solar, wind, wave, and geothermal designs, a map of the facility, and an educational kiosk explaining ways to conserve energy and associated costs in carbon (CO2) output. Emissions of CO2 are presented on the basis of total mass (tons) and output rate (pounds per kilowatt hour). In front of the Energy Center is a working model of a solar house complete with both passive and active components including a solar water heater, photovoltaic (PV) arrays, and transducers.

Energy Center with wind turbines.

According to Wikipedia, annual global sales of photovoltaic technology have grown to approximately 5.6 gigawatts peak (GWp). The three leading countries (Japan, Germany and the USA) represent 90% of the total worldwide PV installations, although China is building a 1.5 GWp PV plant. This is a positive trend, but much larger energy sources are needed in order to sustain growing world populations and build a green energy bridge from a fossil-fuel-based economy based on dwindling supplies of oil to a future built on renewable energy sources.

The Avatar Action Center is now in transition as members figure out how to create a more professional organization. They are also in the process of figuring out how to partner with a real-life roadshow group to translate awareness of sustainability into real world action.

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Worlds in Motion.Biz
In this review of The Seventh Sun, the author discusses "The Sustainabilty Grrls" article. -- Pollywog Gardenvale.

Clickable Culture
Second Life avatar group looking into sustainable design doesn't seem to be asking if Second Life itself is a sustainable platform.
Come to think of it, I haven't heard of a single SL eco-initiative putting that issue on the front burner...