I dislike how articles like this not only don't provide the relevant numbers like percentages, the numbers they do provide are not even the same bases:

"Around 12 million terabytes of hard disc space is currently being used to mine Chia, having risen on an exponential curve since its launch in March. ... Hoffman says that if all hard discs sold in a year – which could hold data totalling roughly 1 zettabyte, or 1 billion terabytes – were used exclusively for mining Chia, it would still use less than 1 per cent of the energy currently used by bitcoin."

Quick, divide 12 million into 1 billion in your head! "Uhhh..." (It's 1.2%.)