Nato has a great response to this meme:
"I suspect that the author of the meme at top has conflated a few 'hot button' issues, and that dealing with them separately is less likely to be as contentious.
For example, it seems like most people in the thread agree that pollution / CO2 emissions are a negative externality from many of our current energy production systems and the cost of those externalities ought to be addressed.
There is a separate question about how to reduce energy usage, which may have some effect on the production of CO2 / other pollutants
There is yet another question about the effects of Bitcoin/Crypto on society, and how / why people mine it / transact with it.
The author of the meme is asserting
1) Bitcoin/Crypto uses more power than currently deployed solar panels, (dubious claim addressed below)
2) That fact negates the environmental benefits of the creation of solar panels.
This short chain of reasoning has many assumptions built into it, including, for example, that if bitcoin stopped existing that the power currently used for bitcoin would not be used at all, rather than that it would be used for other purposes.
It assumes that all energy sources are fungible. (This is not the case. Bitcoin miners often try to position themselves where they can take up extra / unused power production capacity at hydroelectric facilities for example. Getting rid of a mining pool located at a hydroelectric facility would have close to zero effect on the coal plant down the road))
It assumes that the value provided by Bitcoin/Crypto is not worth the environmental cost caused by the CO2 emissions in its creation. To my mind, nobody here has tried to really understand why someone sympathetic might buy/sell bitcoin. Maybe you're a Syrian family fleeing the country and you know that the family silver would be confiscated at the border, but an sd card with some bitcoin on it might get through.
Maybe you're in Venezuela and have to use bitcoin because the official currency is inflating so fast there's no point in using it.
People in this thread seem to think the only reason to buy bitcoin or other crypto is the fomo / bubble aspect and that there aren't people whose lives meaningfully depend on it. I don't actually know the answer here. Maybe my above examples never actually happen. But I would be really worried about banning something that might be another person's lifeline... I don't have any confidence that the people advocating for a ban have done the research or math here."
"I suspect that the author of the meme at top has conflated a few 'hot button' issues, and that dealing with them separately is less likely to be as contentious.
For example, it seems like most people in the thread agree that pollution / CO2 emissions are a negative externality from many of our current energy production systems and the cost of those externalities ought to be addressed.
There is a separate question about how to reduce energy usage, which may have some effect on the production of CO2 / other pollutants
There is yet another question about the effects of Bitcoin/Crypto on society, and how / why people mine it / transact with it.
The author of the meme is asserting
1) Bitcoin/Crypto uses more power than currently deployed solar panels, (dubious claim addressed below)
2) That fact negates the environmental benefits of the creation of solar panels.
This short chain of reasoning has many assumptions built into it, including, for example, that if bitcoin stopped existing that the power currently used for bitcoin would not be used at all, rather than that it would be used for other purposes.
It assumes that all energy sources are fungible. (This is not the case. Bitcoin miners often try to position themselves where they can take up extra / unused power production capacity at hydroelectric facilities for example. Getting rid of a mining pool located at a hydroelectric facility would have close to zero effect on the coal plant down the road))
It assumes that the value provided by Bitcoin/Crypto is not worth the environmental cost caused by the CO2 emissions in its creation. To my mind, nobody here has tried to really understand why someone sympathetic might buy/sell bitcoin. Maybe you're a Syrian family fleeing the country and you know that the family silver would be confiscated at the border, but an sd card with some bitcoin on it might get through.
Maybe you're in Venezuela and have to use bitcoin because the official currency is inflating so fast there's no point in using it.
People in this thread seem to think the only reason to buy bitcoin or other crypto is the fomo / bubble aspect and that there aren't people whose lives meaningfully depend on it. I don't actually know the answer here. Maybe my above examples never actually happen. But I would be really worried about banning something that might be another person's lifeline... I don't have any confidence that the people advocating for a ban have done the research or math here."