A lot has been said about mining and about the electricity consumption of the activities related to bitcoin mining. However, I have thought of the alternatives and how other systems produce not just energy waste, but also plenty of useless work and "human waste".
To have a network that can ensure the completeness of transactions, the global accessibility and all the features that bitcoins, and many alts, have at the moment, would probable produce a huge carbon footprint. Just think of the VISA system or the banking system... the amount of people working on it, the waste of commuting to works, the infrastructure.
Thinking of all that, would you still say Bitcoin is bad for the environment?
I think Bitcoin cannot produce or contribute to the environmental issue. However, Bitcoin procedures considered as one of the sign about industrialization and modernization but its development only done inside the internet. Thus, Bitcoin operation is rather really helpful for our environment. As the digital currency continues to improve the internet as the field of knowledge, it allows to generate informations about protecting the nature. Also, the budgets produced by this procedures may also contribute to the maintenance of our natural world.