Climate change: Bitcoin about to face fresh onslaught over its damaging environmental footprint
Greenpeace, Cryptocurrency billionaire lobby to change Bitcoin code.
Bitcoin is about to face a fresh onslaught over its damaging environmental footprint. Several climate change activist groups including Greenpeace and crypto billionaire Chris Larsen are launching a “Change the Code, Not the Climate” campaign, designed to pressure the Bitcoin community to alter the way it orders transactions that already consumes as much power as Sweden. In five years Bitcoin may consume as much power as Japan, Larsen said in an interview.
The campaign will buy ads in leading publications over the next month. Greenpeace, Environmental Working Group and some local activist groups battling Bitcoin miners are also mobilizing their millions of members for grassroots efforts. The campaign has already reached out to a dozen key people and corporations, some of them involved in Bitcoin and yet pledging Environmental, Social and Governance, or ESG, compliance, according to Michael Brune, who is in charge of the campaign.
“We are in this campaign for the long haul, but we are hoping -- particularly since Bitcoin is now being financed by entities and individuals who care about climate change -- that we can compel leadership to agree that this is a problem that needs to be addressed,” said Brune, who was a long-time executive director of the Sierra Club before resigning last year. “Goldman Sachs, BlackRock, PayPal, Venmo, Fidelity -- there are lots of companies we anticipate will be helpful to this effort.”
The campaign is counting on several factors to help its cause: There’s increasing frustration in some communities in the U.S. that have found themselves hosting Bitcoin miners and dealing with issues such as excessive noise. After China banned
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