[Cryptography] Energy Consumption: Standards Trolls (was: disaster)

Alex Flanagan alex.flanagan at gmail.com
Wed Jan 6 13:49:49 EST 2021


> I don't care to stake out a position on this matter right now but, just
> for fun, another possible objection to energy consumption might be
> economic side effects such as increases in energy demand which, in turn,
> creates an increase in energy prices, thus perhaps starving other
> enterprises of access to energy at sustainable prices.
>

 In the spirit of both fun and "strong opinions, loosely held": I reckon
that we *want* to be consuming as much energy as possible. It's the
production emissions that are the issue -- I want my kids and grandkids to
consume 10x and 100x the energy I do (I'm quoting Bezos there I think). The
only way to really do this is space-based industry, but now I'm well
off-topic :D

I suspect you're right, though -- that most people objecting on grounds
> of power consumption are objecting to emissions.  Note that the
> objection to the power consumption incentives in Bitcoin mining aren't
> really alleviated by the Iceland example because, regardless of how
> Iceland does it, energy consumption in China likely depends
> overwhelmingly on high-emissions power generation in China.  That might
> be worth keeping in mind when examining the pros and cons of Bitcoin's
> "proof of work" mining.
>

Yes, for sure, and I support China's efforts to move to green energy
production so they can approach Western-per-capita-level energy consumption
safely.
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