that was before bitcoin exploded onto the world scene. the whole world depends on it now and i dont know if there's any justification for trying to reduce energy consumption. for example, do you think bitcoin miners are just going to let their hardware sit idle for 8 minutes? or however long the 2nd round lasts? they'll divert their hashing power to something else for that amount of time and then bring it back when the next round 1 starts. so all you're really accomplishing is weakening your own network by letting go of some of its hashing power which will get used somewhere else. it's not a net gain for the environment. it's neutral.

the hardware is there. it's going to be running and hashing something. you might as well take advantage of it fully, which is what bitcoin currently does. thats how i see it anyway. we don't care about cardona or ethereum here. so we dont want bitcoin hardware being diverted to strengthen those networks.