I don't know how electricity is priced in your place of residency, but in mine, the price of electricity for home users is mostly fixed and can change once or twice a year only. It will be difficult to adjust it if we see another x100 in bitcoin price within a year or two. If the client is a company it is "worst" because a lot of them have long term contracts with fixed prices.
If price doesn't increase consumers break down the doors of the electric company and City Hall. Price will increase damn fast when people don't have electricity. I am here in Davao, Mindanao and we are having rotating brownouts. The people and businesses are ready to strangle the necks of the politicians and so yes the price has risen and the new coal powerplants are being built (200MW to come online next year and more coming).
I agree price may not rise if the damn socialists who want subsidies are in control.
I agree that a higher price (of electricity) could solve the problem in the long term (5+ years). In the short term I except that the most polluting plants will just run at maximum capacity to deliver the required power.
Man-made climate and global environmental change is the most irrational thought a person could have. Start
here on the definition of the scientific method.
2. That article assumes the genre and capital cost of the mining equipment is irrelevant. Thus with cpu-only mining, this problem will be much improved (...)
Yes it is (irrelevant). No it won't (be improved). Read the OP.
I assume you are referring to this point:
Hypothesis :
1. Miners are rational actors. Therefore once they have bought a mining rig, they will not stop it unless the cost of running it is higher than the price of the mined bitcoins. However if the price drops or if the difficulty grows too high they should stop mining.
You must have flunked Economics 101 because you forgot opportunity cost.
They can sell the hardware. Factor that in and you see my point was relevant.
Obviously for ASICs you are correct, but general purpose computers you would not be. That is another reason a cpu-only coin is needed.