What about sustainability? Are we burning value more than producing?
In my first article, while focusing on the myths and facts regarding our daily companions - cars, I touched also the topics of environmental protection, general awareness and the sustainability. When we talk about the environmental protection, we often focus on ourselves and what this protection will benefit us as individuals. Which, of course is not a bad thing. Focusing on the environment to preserve our health has a nice ring to it :) Meanwhile, we are placing a really egoistic narrative in the public that we are trying to protect the environment, when actually we are saving ourselves and our health. Which, again is not a bad thing, if we reach the main goal :)
Side note: The environment will survive without us, we will not survive without it.
On this note I want to put into perspective one vastly popular topic, an aspect whose negative influence on the environment we disregard - The crypto currency mining as part of the blockchain technology. Don't get me wrong, the crypto currencies and the technology itself has its benefits, such as being a flexible tool, investment (passive income, one-time deals etc.) and part of a general economic freedom (in terms of tracking transactions, transaction fees etc.). But - and there is always a but, while reading about this topic I came across a staggering fact about the electricity consumption while mining and thus its contribution to air pollution.
For example, as David Wallace-Wells stated:
"Since most electricity used to mine Bitcoin comes from fossil fuels, Bitcoin produces a whopping 37 million tons of carbon dioxide annually, about the same amount as Switzerland does by simply existing."
These thoughts are complementary with a lot of daily discussions with my peers that are actively mining and into this financial technology matrix. The energy consumption is unreasonably high. Some are finding ways of using this energy for heating (in colder periods of the year), some are just wasting it. Almost none is using renewable sources for electricity. As it seems, while these ways have economical reasoning we will not work on sustainability.
And at the end, for what? I am asking myself and you as well, for what? Are we, in the process of creating value from thin air via technology putting aside the true values? Are we damaging our basic human rights to live in a healthy and safe environment? That is why we need policies that would prevent further damages on the environment and would address these issues accordingly. We need to have a system that will facilitate the process of making the crypto-miners more energy efficient and sustainable.
At the end, we should and we can, both strive for progress and for sustainability. It is the only way how we can have a win-win situation that would benefit all of us.