On a different eon that might be true but nowadays compute power - electricity - global warming. Given that, “frivolous” work that just burns energy could be potentially postponed until we go fully renewable in our energy stack.
GIMPS' ~1PetaFLOPS[1] uses no more than a megawatt [2].
That's about 10 Gigawatt-hours (GWh) over a year [3].
The average US house uses about 10 MWh in a year [4] so GIMPS = the electrical power use of ~1,000 households. Portland reduced their power consumption by 20 GWh by switching their street lights to LEDs[5].
The electrical consumption for Superbowl parties is an estimated 75 GWh [6]. (I think Superbowl parties are far more frivolous.)
[1] - https://www.mersenne.org/primenet/
[2] from 2012, "HP plans to deliver a full peak petaflop with just a single megawatt" - https://www.hpcwire.com/2012/09/05/hp_intel_score_petaflop_s...
[3] 365.25days * 24hours/day * 1MW / 1000 = 8.8 GWh
[4] "In 2020, the average annual electricity consumption for a U.S. residential utility customer was 10,715 kilowatthours (kWh)" https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=97&t=3
[5] https://www.portlandoregon.gov/transportation/article/678781
[6] https://www.americasgenerators.com/blog/post/2017/02/15/What...