Fiat uses millions of times more energy than Bitcoin. Bitcoin will save the babies, puppies and rainbows.
Evidence?
Just to continue the discussion, assuming you are correct for a second this figure isn't per person using the currency is it?
World population: 7 billion (ref
http://www.worldometers.info/world-population/). Lets assume that half of them use fiat currency, so 3.5 billion
Estimated bitcoin population: 500k (ref
http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/197tqx/estimating_the_amount_of_bitcoin_users/)
Ratio: 7000 fiat users to each bitcoin user. So current bitcoin electricity consumption has to be 7000 times less than current fiat electricity consumption in order to be on par.
So, at a million times less energy consumption bitcoin would indeed consume less. So lets see this evidence?
Cheers, Paul.