Quote from: pneumatic5 on May 17, 2016, 05:50:15 PM

I’m an engaged environmental researcher and have recently become a bitcoin enthusiast.These are two possibly conflicting fascinations, as previously pointed out by Christopher Malmo here at Motherboard. That’s because bitcoin is incredibly energy intensive: at the time of Malmo’s piece, he calculated that a single bitcoin transaction requires as much electricity as the daily consumption of 1.6 American households, and that number has increased since then. “Adopting Bitcoin as a major currency anytime in the next few decades,” he wrote, “would just exacerbate anthropogenic climate change by needlessly increasing electricity consumption until it’s too late.”

Currently one transaction cost slightly under 8 USD. The catastrophic scenarios for climate change by needlessly increasing electricity consumption is only if the Bitcoin price skyrockets (much more than doubling every 4 years) which I doubt can happen.

The good thing is we should just expect doubling price every 4 years, which is great return on investment if it can continue longterm - and the best of all, in this case energy consuption of miners remains the same longterm (about the same in 30 years as now). So basically the Bitcoin price defines energy consuption of Bitcoin network.