I don't think you can call it "irrational". The moment when people buy power plants just to mine bitcoins you have to admit we have a serious problem. So when you say:

> The environmental impact of the first generation PoW systems, mostly Bitcoin at this point, is a waste of energy in the mind of HN. The trust and security that it provides to the blockchain is not valued.

First, we don't care what generation it is: the fact is that Bitcoin causes significant environmental damage. It is not "in the mind of HN", it's physical. As for what you call "trust and security", Bitcoin is an instrument of speculation (or investment, depending as you see it) and as such is extremely unstable, so for me it provides much lower level of trust and security than fiat currency. Not to mention alternative coins that appear and disappear every day.