Essay by Eric Worrall
Which would you rather give up? Bitcoin or beef?
Bitcoin worse for the climate than beef, say economists
Researchers mince ‘digital gold’ claims with study showing cryptocurrency’s impact
Lindsay Clark Fri 30 Sep 2022 // 15:30 UTC
Far from being the “digital gold” some claim, Bitcoin’s relative climate change impact is greater than the beef industry, and over seven times more than actual gold mining.
Economic researchers compared the environmental impact of Bitcoin – created by using computing brute force to crack complex algorithmic puzzles – against three measures of environmental impact between January 2016 and December 2021.
Led by Benjamin Jones, associate professor in economics at the University of New Mexico, they looked at whether the estimated climate damages are increasing over time. They also looked at whether the market price of Bitcoin exceeds the economic cost of climate damages and how the climate damages per coin mined compare to climate damages of other sectors and commodities.
Astoundingly, they found that in 2020 Bitcoin mining used 75.4 terawatt hours per year (TWhyear-1) – higher energy usage than Austria (69.9 TWhyear-1) or Portugal (48.4 TWhyear-1).
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Taking the relative damage of Bitcoin averaged between 2016 and 2021 of 35 percent of the market value, the economists went on to compare the cryptocurrency’s climate impact to that of other industries. While it was less than electricity produced by natural gas (46 percent) and gasoline produced from crude oil (41 percent), it was slightly greater than the relative damage of beef production (at 33 percent) and much more than gold mining (at 4 percent).
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Obviously I realise it will be a tough call for all of you, whether to keep your steak and burgers and make the silicon valley liberal bitcoin fans cry.
Of course, the better option is to embrace liberty over climate hysteria, so people can keep both.
