I wrote this paper in 2019 as part of requirements for my PhD. Given the gobal droughts we are seeing now, it’s evermore clear that climage change is not just a climate crisis, it is a water crisis. My hope is that the layreader will be able to make some fundamental connections using the High Plains Aquifer as an example.
A recent report found that indirect carbon emissions from the amount of cash and investments a company has in the United States banking industry greatly diminish their efforts to decarbonize their operations. When comparing the bank industry to bitcoin, which turns out to be better for the planet?
The end goal here is not to push a libertarian or Austrian economic wet dream of a Bitcoin reserve currency future, but to disrupt the financial system through Bitcoin in order to create a window of opportunity to transform the financial system to meet the needs of a climate change world. Bitcoin is the only cryptocurrency that is in a position to be this threat.
I have alluded to some issues related to the digital currency, but the most important one for the climate change community is that of its environmental impact. There are issues with mining companies and underlying energy sources that drive the high-computation costs.
The goal here isn’t to focus on all the details of the shifting economic landscape but to argue why Bitcoin is the kind of disruption that we need to stop the global climate from warming beyond 1.5 degrees Celsius. However, the reader must understand the dire situation we are in before such an argument can be made.
We need a major system disruption in order to make the transformative societal change that is necessary to stop the planet from warming humans into extinction. Bitcoin, the decentralized digital currency, may be the very disruption that we need. Bitcoin is transferred over a peer-to-peer network and its’ transactions are verified using network nodes that must solve cryptographic puzzles.