Folks, please stop with the ‘whataboutism’ argument. We are debating the morality of energy usage so comparative arguments are perfectly fine. You don’t hear every day articles about the huge nr of gaming PCs or gaming consoles sucking energy, but you do hear about bitcoin. I have absolutely no problem with taxing dirty energy or disincentivizing high energy consumption but do it for everything. It’s hypocritical otherwise.
Gaming PCs actually improve peoples' lives in a non-zero-sum fashion. I have yet to hear an argument for how bitcoin does the same.
>I have absolutely no problem with taxing dirty energy or disincentivizing high energy consumption but do it for everything. It’s hypocritical otherwise.
Nobody sane is arguing for conditional carbon pricing (although obviously some will say that carbon pricing should be accompanied by e.g. an explicit transport subsidy for poor people), the "argument" is that while we absolutely should do it, nobody is able to get it passed into law - so while it's the best solution, we can't wait for it and we need to focus on other solutions in the mean time.
