Yet there is also a coded message here, for others who might consider retreating into the virtual in response to the consequences of climate change. Tuvalu will be one of the first nations to be submerged by rising sea levels and faces an existential threat. Mick Tsikas/AAP The Metaverse is not a refuge The metaverse is built on the physical infrastructure of servers, data centers, network routers, devices, and front-end displays.
All of this technology has an invisible carbon footprint luxembourg whatsapp number data 5 million and requires physical maintenance and energy. A study published in Nature predicts that the internet will consume about 20% of the world's electricity by 2025 . The idea of the metaverse nation as a response to climate change is exactly the kind of thinking that has brought us here. The language that is being adopted around new technologies – like “cloud computing,” “virtual reality,” and the “metaverse” – presents itself as both clean and green.
These terms are loaded with “ technological solutionism ” and “ greenwashing . ” They obscure the fact that technological responses to climate change often exacerbate the problem because of their high energy and resource consumption. Kofe is well aware that the metaverse is not an answer to Tuvalu's problems . He explicitly states that we need to focus on reducing the impacts of climate change through initiatives such as a fossil fuel non-proliferation treaty .