Energy use promotes human flourishing. Look up fatalities from climate-related catastrophes in the past hundred years---floods, winter storms, hurricanes, heat waves, crop-failure induced famines---and you'll see a steady downward trend corresponding to increased use of machines. All these machines use energy. Humans are also increasingly capable of working to protect endangered species, especially after human well-being has been secured.
Inadequate energy supply (not enough at the right time in the right place) results in deaths. Energy consumption isn't bad ipso facta.
Developing a monetary system independent of government control and monopoly may be one of the most important human 'machine' systems ever built, at impartial price signaling at a societal scale enables people who don't even know each other to collaborate to solve common problems. Thus bitcoin's energy consumption may actually be one of the best uses of energy to date. Its certainly less destructive than the military power and state/central-bank coercion underpinning existing fiat monetary systems.
Inadequate energy supply (not enough at the right time in the right place) results in deaths. Energy consumption isn't bad ipso facta.
Developing a monetary system independent of government control and monopoly may be one of the most important human 'machine' systems ever built, at impartial price signaling at a societal scale enables people who don't even know each other to collaborate to solve common problems. Thus bitcoin's energy consumption may actually be one of the best uses of energy to date. Its certainly less destructive than the military power and state/central-bank coercion underpinning existing fiat monetary systems.