Greenpeace is doing exactly what it should: advocate for the protection of the environment.

Concerns about POW are real concerns. As Bitcoiners and as fellow brothers in the quest for a better world, we need to respond appropriately.

Making fun and minimizing environmental risk is bad for our case. The argument we need to make is a reasonable one, and we need to be open to conversations with environmentalists.

1. POW incentivizes miners to find ever-cheaper sources of energy

2. The cheapest sources of energy are untapped options far from populations: off-shore winds and waves, tidal straights, solar, etc.

3. Electricity can only be transported about 200 miles, so most end-users must engage nearby power sources. This often prevents renewable energy from being an option for them.

4. Bitcoin mining is the one industry that can bring itself to the energy, rather than the other way around.

At some point, all miners will be using renewable energy because it’s the most economical to source energy that others cannot use.

5. The Bitcoin ecosystem undermines one of the most environmentally wasteful institutions in the world: the US military

6. The Bitcoin ecosystem prevents the transfer of wealth from people that have to eat, move, and work for that wealth, to people who employ exploitative institutions to extract rents. If people have to work 20% more to fulfill their needs, that comes with a 20% greater environmental burden.

We cannot expect others to appreciate our reason for POW if we do not try to understand their concerns as well.

We all should be environmentalists, and we should all be advocates for decentralized money.