And just to be clear: Bitcoin is a bit more pushback than, say, residential heating, because it’s an entirely new CO2-emitting industry, and it is neither necessary nor beneficial except maybe for the thin slice of humanity that spends too much time on Reddit.
In other industries carbon emissions are an issue too, but at least there are people trying to bring energy use down with technology. Bitcoin’s difficulty mechanism nullifies any such attempts.
Name a single thing we produce with Bitcoin.
I have it on good authority that owning bitcoin gives people a very similar kind of feeling and there is nothing wrong with that. humans doing human things.
of course now there's plenty of arbiters of what constitutes proper warm fuzziness, and apparently a new BMW made from aluminium and steel is AAA+, but buying 0.1 of a bitcoin is not.
We think of them as having _other benefits_ besides environmental costs, but is this true? Is it better to travel far away to enjoy nature and a magnificent view, or to have the patience to look at things living in your own backyard for example?
Unless these things are being used as status symbols, or the person in question is actively attempting to destroy the environment, there must be some other benefit. Indeed, I certainly don't consider environmental cost to be a "benefit".
My "big petrol car" (which isn't really so big; more of a mid-sized coupe, but I digress) gives me the following benefits:
- "Warm fuzzy feeling" (the rumble, the hum, the traditional construction, etc).
- Plenty of power when I want it
- A traditional, relatively simple design that I understand; when something breaks or needs maintenance I can generally fix it. Some electronics, but not riddled with it throughout every system as today's vehicles are.
> Is it better to travel far away to enjoy nature and a magnificent view, or to have the patience to look at things living in your own backyard for example?
Well, not everybody has much of a backyard to speak of; however...
I would say that both are good. I don't get to travel much. Once every couple of years if I'm lucky. I wish I could more often. I probably won't even see most of my own country in my lifetime, let alone the wider world, and that... seems something of a shame. To imply that this feeling is somehow connected to the environmental cost of travel, well... seems a bit off.
Internet arguments about Bitcoin?
Also, NFTs are generally based on Ethereum, not Bitcoin. Did you read the article?
If can start on the agreement that we need to curb our environmental impact, then any new technology we embrace surely needs to be very useful to as many people as possible in order to justify any significant affect on the environment.