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The amount of wastage from bitcoin mining pales compared to the GDP spent on traditional forms of trust. Think banking isn't contributing to global warming? Well all those office buildings have lights and electricity and back-room servers, not to mention the opportunity costs.
If you want to reduce the need for bitcoin, then reduce the need for trustless solutions. This is an open-ended political and social problem, but not one that is likely to remain unsolved forever.
That provoked me to do a Fermi estimate comparing banking's power consumption to Bitcoin's. Posting it in case anyone cares.
Estimated energy use of banking
The service sector uses 7% of global power and produces 68% of global GDP. Financial services make up about 17% of global GDP, ... (read more)