Bottom line is some countries may ban bitcoin mining but it will definitely not be because of "fears of climate change" even if they insist on this being the reason. They will only ban bitcoin mining when they face an energy crisis which Europe and to some extent US are facing it these days which is why we are seeing an increased number of discussions about this matter!
It is worth mentioning that China banned bitcoin mining because they were also facing an energy crisis and it didn't solve a thing considering the fact that China's electricity usage continued growing like before, it didn't even have a small drop!
Because the decision to mine or to not mine is already being handled economically by itself. Banning mining because of facing an energy crisis is virtue signalling at best.
1. Its already insanity to mine Bitcoin from the grid in Europe with skyrocketing energy prices for both industrial and private consumers, it was unprofitable before and even more now.
2. If energy prices are this high its more profitable to give energy to the grid than to mine Bitcoin with it for energy producers.
Its like a self-regulating system that doesnt take energy from where its too scarce, so bans wont solve anything again like in china. Its just another example of the incompetence of central authorities to handle crisis. They rather just use it for blame games against unwanted technologies and use arguments that sound logical on a surface level to fool 90% of people. Taking the most incompetent decisions just to maintain an image of competence to the public. Wasting time on irrelevant to the problem issues, so the public can feel like something is being done, while being distracted from actual solutions to the problem. Almost like they understand psychology really well.
The problem of highers costs and low supply is very real and it might destroy their economy. This is not a problem where the government can say it will fix without really fixing it. They really need to fix it. Will bitcoin
Also, I agree that decision to mine and not to mine will be handled economically, however, for some miners, this problem will be a decision of