A new report from Greenpeace is currently enraging the Bitcoin community: It reveals the close connections between mining associations and the fossil fuel lobby in the USA – and how they prevent mining from being regulated in a climate-friendly way. Unfortunately, the community’s anger is directed at the wrong target.
Some things repeat themselves again and again: Greenpeace USA, known for a Ripple-funded campaign against Bitcoin mining, has once again issued a report that casts a negative light on mining, and the Bitcoin community is raging.
If you would like to look at a long chain of accusations and insults against Greenpeace, you should click on the corresponding thread on Twitter. Bitcoin magazines and experts are reacting with fact checks and scathing counterstatements, and all in all, Greenpeace seems to be cutting its teeth again.
BREAKING: @GreenpeaceUSA just released an explosive new report exposing the deep ties between the fossil fuel industry, right-wing climate deniers, and the growing lobbying network pushing a plan to save dirty coal and gas plants with #Bitcoin
READ NOW: https://t.co/zXpeHg6LkB pic.twitter.com/YXPrd3jIwF
— Greenpeace USA (@greenpeaceusa) March 19, 2024
It’s far too easy to make a general denunciation of Bitcoin’s high electricity consumption. What matters is not how many gigawatt hours or terawatt hours the miners use – but rather what source they are generated from and how much CO2 is emitted. Everyone agrees on this – even Greenpeace.
Bitcoin miners use the electricity that is stably available at the cheapest price. Ideally, this would be renewable energies, and if not, then this is also a political mistake. Good policy incentivizes Bitcoin miners to use green energy rather than black energy, and ideally ensures that mining exploits its potential to promote the expansion of renewable energy.
In solidarity with the fossil fuel lobby
The problem now, however, is that miners in the USA are doing everything they can to actively prevent such a policy. And that’s exactly what you can read in the Greenpeace report, even though most Bitcoin media and influencers are trying to suppress this information by waging a mock battle over whether Greenpeace is using the right or wrong numbers and values.
Greenpeace’s report “reveals how the Bitcoin mining industry is aligned with fossil fuel and other dirty industry groups and climate change deniers and is blocking action needed to solve the climate crisis.”
The miners like to claim that they are promoting the expansion of renewable energies and stabilizing power grids. But beware of the legislature trying to oblige them to do so, for example by banning mining with fossil fuels or even just wanting to create more transparency about the energy sources used – then they go to the barricades in solidarity with the fossil fuel lobby and do everything they can to get such laws and rules to prevent.
The Greenpeace report gives numerous examples of this: In Montana, a mining group, together with lawyers from the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), pushed through a law that prevents local oversight of noisy and energy-hungry mining farms. The ALEC is so against climate protection that it even goes too far for the oil company Shell.
In numerous states, lobby groups were able to pass a “right to mine” law, which primarily prevents local authorities from taking action against noise pollution and excessive electricity consumption by miners or restricting their energy sources, such as renewable energies.
In New York State, mining associations have fought against a moratorium on new mining farms powered by fossil fuels. They recently managed to stop a push by the US Energy Information Administration (EIA) to obtain more detailed information about miners’ energy consumption to prevent them from destabilizing the power grid.
They have already lobbied against a bill with which the Biden government wants to force miners to disclose their energy sources. And so forth. Any law that aims to achieve what the miners supposedly want anyway will be fought to the death.
A revolving door of climate change deniers
The Greenpeace report also lists a staggering number of connections to the fossil fuel industry, climate change deniers and the Trump administration.
The mining associations work with groups such as ALEC, organizations from the Koch brothers’ network and numerous Republican politicians who previously held senior jobs in the oil industry; They employ staff who previously fought against climate protection measures in the fossil fuel industry or the Trump administration.
Some examples: In the Chamber of Digital Commerce, a general cryptocurrency lobbying group, chair Perianne Boring previously worked for RT America, while other members worked on behalf of the oil industry; Digital Energy Council (DEC) President Thomas Mapes previously worked on energy policy for Trump and on anti-environmental initiatives; Blockchain Association staff lobbied the meat industry for the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association; Finally, the Satoshi Action Fund (SAF) is a direct successor to an organization that did PR for the Trump administration in order to whitewash his environmental and climate policies; It contains numerous members of the Trump administration as well as climate change deniers.
And these are just a few examples. The entire list of mining lobbyists who previously worked for the fossil fuel lobby against climate and environmental protection laws or cast doubt on man-made climate change is tiring and shockingly long.
Especially as a Bitcoiner, you shouldn’t just accept this. The last thing you should do is respond to such extensive research by attacking Greenpeace.
Source: https://bitcoinblog.de/2024/03/21/greenpeace-beklagt-dass-bitcoin-miner-hand-in-hand-mit-fossiler-lobby-massnahmen-zum-klimaschutz-torpedieren/
