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24 Apr 2007
Dell has come under heavy fire for a promotion of its Plant a Tree for Me environmental programme in the Second Life virtual world.
As vnunet.com's Silicon Valley Sleuth blog reported last week, Dell is giving away free 'virtual trees' which Second Life users can plant on private land and determine the pace at which they grow.
In a posting on a company blog, the computer maker marketed the event as an "expansion of Dell's Plant a Tree for Me programme in Second Life".
Dell's real world promotion solicits donations from buyers to plant trees so that the the tree's oxygen production offsets some of the carbon dioxide emissions caused during the manufacturing and use of the system.
Contrary to Dell's assertions, the virtual tree planting does not help reduce carbon emissions.
The Second Life tree is essentially a software application that requires computing power to grow and show up in the virtual world, thereby increasing Second Life's carbon emissions.
IT author Nicholas Carr has previously calculated that active Second Life players consume as much as 1,752kWh on a yearly basis, ranking the game only slightly below the average power consumption of the residents of Brazil.
Dell's attempt to advertise the virtual tree giveaway as environmentally safe has not impressed people in the blogosphere.
A poster on the Moonbattery blog claimed that Dell's move is "an indication that environmentalism's divorce from reality is now nearly complete".
Analyst firm TechDirt commented on its blog: "We have seen companies make some pretty ridiculous attempts to gain credibility by doing something in Second Life, but this one has to take the 'cake'."
In a comment on the Silicon Valley Sleuth blog, a Dell employee by the name of Laura Thomas said that the company did not intend for the promotion to be deceptive.
"The intention of the virtual trees and the party was to increase awareness of the real life Plant a Tree for Me programme, not to increase [Second Life creator] Linden Lab's energy consumption."
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Do you agree?
Not Heavy Fire, Merely a Few Extremists
I would hardly call criticism from a handful of extremists to be coming under "heavy fire". Most people in SL either ignored this, or didn't know it was happening. This argumentation of Carr's is among the more specious I've seen in a long time. If some people stayed home and didn't *drive* to their Earth Day celebrations *cough* then they'd save carbon emissions by being on SL. Nobody really has the scientific answer on whether SL saves or uses energy on balance. Of course anything that is done synthetically can't replace what is done for real. But if the synthetic exercise brought more people to Dell's program to help offset emissions by tree-planting, or helped the computer recycling program, what on earth's wrong with that? It seems to me extremists don't really care about the environment, or finding out the truth about what greens or doesn't, they merely wish to exploit the emotional issue of the environment to promote their extremist economic views that have no significant following, in RL or SL for that matter.
Posted by: Prokofy Neva 24 Apr 2007
Dell, Earth Day and Second Life
Hello, this is Sean and I work on environmental programs at Dell. We appreciate your feedback on the program but wanted to add some additional thoughts on our decision to introduce 'Plant a Tree for Me' in Second Life. The program was initially introduced in January for customers purchasing new computers. Last month, we expanded 'Plant a Tree for Me' to include any business or consumer in the U.S. (with or without product purchase) and for an extended portfolio of IT products. In real life program, we pass along 100 percent of donations to The Conservation Fund and Carbonfund.org to plant trees in sustainably managed forests. By introducing the program in Second Life, we hope to raise awareness of the importance of climate stewardship and provide a way for participants to link back to the program's Web site to make a donation in real life. This past weekend, we also hosted a free Earth Day computer recycling event for consumers in Washington, D.C. The event generated a significant amount of visibility for the e-recycling issue and collected 45 tons of unwanted IT equipment during a four hour period. Thanks again for your thoughts and feedback. If you're interested in learning more about our environmental programs, I'd encourage you to visit www.dell.com/earth.
Posted by: Sean @ Dell 24 Apr 2007