Seems like some section of the media found that drugs / money laundering angle doesn't resonate with people so they try going about power usage.
Sure if you don't use Bitcoin it may appear to you as wasteful, but so someone who doesn't drive may feel about people charging they cars if they could just walk or cycle.
Ultimately, if they pay the bills, then what's the fuss about?
It's massive waste? How would you feel if someone bought 2 billion gallons of gasoline just to burn it in the middle of a desert biggest fire humanity has ever seen?
If the energy used by bitcoin mining is irreplaceable, that just means we're not taxing it enough to replace it properly with renewables. The solution is simple, just tax industrial energy use so that it's not underpriced relative to the externalities it creates. Spend that tax revenue on bulking up the grid with renewables. Then let people buy however much they want and do whatever they want with it, at the right price.
If you purchase gasoline, it's not my right to tell you what to do with it, insofar as it doesn't create additional externalities from that point on, like if you pour it in a river or something. You legally own it now, you get to do whatever you want with it. Same with wood, same with internet bandwidth - this is generally how private property should work.
The burning in the thought experiment is actually the least bad thing imo. The alternative is to seize property from someone who purchased that property legitimately, which is unacceptable.
As a side note, burning gasoline for no reason is pretty close to what billionaires do whenever they fly their private jets. It's a fact of capitalism, and it will exist for as long as capitalism exists.
No, you make the cost of energy take into account the cost of the carbon emissions. That's what a carbon tax is. It's not a dangerous path, it's basic economics.
And I didn't say anything about "telling people what they can and can't do", you pulled that out of nowhere. The earlier comments were talking about "shaming" and "what's the fuss", not legal mandates.
Also in practice a law like that is almost certainly going to be implemented as a fine, which is pretty close to a tax.
We also don't tax carbon emissions at what they cost to clean up, so bitcoin mining on a grid that uses fossil fuels dirties the planet without paying for its clean up.
Should we look at other entities using energy? For instance, why not look at all the data centres? I am sure the world could live with 90% services shut down.
Memes, gossip sites, blogs are non-essential and many more.
This is a good point. Once something can be called a culture it becomes invalid and should be shunned, such as with hand washing