How metaverse can help fight climate change

Metaverse is no doubt in the news but also is in its infancy stage. This said, its opportunities are huge. Several companies are at the forefront of adopting it to enable the future of human civilisation. Companies such as NVIDIA are ensuring the focus is on the business-to-business market, while Meta, formerly Facebook, is reliant on the business-to-customer market. What is the metaverse? To borrow the words of NVIDIA’s CEO Jensen Huang, it is nothing but the internet in 3D, which is connected, persistent, virtual, and something that will entail not just hyperlinking but ‘hyperjumping’ from one world to another. According to some other definitions it is also the ‘convergence of virtual, augmented and digital worlds’. As per one of my academic projects at the University of Southern California, I did a deep dive to understand what it would take to succeed in the metaverse market, and I zeroed in on some of these points. One is, of course, the idea; two, how to implement this idea would be reliant upon the overarching strategic vision. The third would be collaborating. And last but not least, I also wonder if the commercial market would indeed be best suited to tap into the real potential of the metaverse industry. Needless to state, the niche technical expertise and the financial costs would also be two factors that would determine how effective a metaverse is. No doubt the metaverse would be about universal scene description(USD) that is to allow better coordinated simulated experiences or for that matter virtual workrooms, homes and venues for social gatherings. However, one of the aspects that needs to be studied and watched is how these metaverse industries will play a role in fighting climate change in the years to come. Amitabh Kant, India’s G-20 sherpa, recently said in an interview that green initiatives must be forged with emerging technologies, and that is the future. In June this year, Cornell University published a paper that stated how the metaverse could have environmental benefits, too: lowering the global surface temperature by up to 0.02 degrees Celsius before the end of the century. The study also interestingly suggested metaverse usage would be adopted by 90 per cent of the world’s population. It is important to acknowledge that this is just theoretical and that there is no uptake. This is indeed a fair assessment, but the world moving towards the prospective use of metaverse industries to fight climate change cannot be fully ruled out either. Hence the question: can the metaverse help fight climate change? Here are some examples where nascent but important steps are being taken to adopt a metaverse technology to fight climate change. The onset of COVID already saw how people quickly adopted virtual meetings and conversations; with the advent of high-tech 3D environments, it would be interesting to see if people indeed would travel to one continent or country for that matter, which in turn would directly reduce the carbon footprint. Using the metaverse, similar environments for meetings can also be created so that the basic environment and the ambience of the meeting are not lost. Meta has already initiated the horizon workrooms for this purpose. Another example is something like the NVIDIA’s Omniverse, which aims to create a digital earth, also called E2. The core objective of this technology as part of the broader Omniverse is to predict the impacts of climate change up to at least 30 years in the future. As part of this is NVIDIA’s Paraview Connect, which would enable scientists to interactively analyse climate data in 3D from multiple sources and explore ‘what if’ scenarios. As a use case, climate scientists have also used this to predict extreme weather conditions in the event of hurricanes in the US. Studies have also revealed that a digital twin can reduce a building’s carbon emissions by 50 per cent. Using digital twin technology, it’s possible to integrate a large set of data sources to make predictions on factors such as air pollution and carbon emissions and then identify actions to address these challenges. Another way in which the metaverse can indeed play a role in fighting climate change is, of course, through behavioural change. Several virtual and augmented reality platforms can be used to persuade the general populace to adopt cleaner, greener ways of living. The Government of India has also spearheaded the LIFE initiative, which means Lifestyle for Environment, which is centred around enabling behavioural changes towards sustainable ways of living. Perhaps the metaverse technologies can be utilised to enforce this mission of the Government as well as the larger climate public diplomacy initiatives of the Government. Studies have shown how people normalise climate conditions, which in turn ensures ignorance of the basic problem of climate change. Metaverse can prove to drive behavioural change to address this issue. The UN’s Digital Art for Climate Initiative is also one such initiative that is aimed at bringing out behavioural change using the metaverse to fight climate change. What the metaverse is widely believed to force is for people to move from the physical to the virtual, opting to buy virtual products even in terms of real estate as opposed to physical ones. As mentioned, no doubt, thinking of these emerging technologies, one is sure to infer that this would in turn only contribute to damaging our planet further in terms of climate change. Say the large data centres that would be required to run these technologies. Not just this, Kate Crawford, Principal Researcher at Microsoft, in her fascinating book, The Atlas of AI, also details the human costs that are involved in building artificial intelligence. In her book, she writes about the plight of mine workers in resource-rich countries and sheds light on the working conditions of labourers in tech companies. But in pursuit of sustainability, it is important to deduce the benefits that the metaverse industries can offer as climate-focused actions. It did not take us long to adapt ourselves to smartphones. In the not-so-distant future, the metaverse is going to be a necessity, so it is important to understand its uses, pros, and cons to ensure responsible technology is used for sustainable development. Writer is an author and policy expert. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely that of the author. 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