and if meth users randomly digging swimming pools used more energy than Norway (1-2% of total electricity usage) then he'd have a point! Like if industrious me

and if meth users randomly digging swimming pools used more energy than Norway (1-2% of total electricity usage) then he'd have a point! Like if industrious meth users were buying up all the bulldozers so nobody else could get their socially-productive stuff built, and measurably increasing the national consumption of fuel, then yeah, probably something would be done about that after like, the third or fourth multi-year meth-construction wave. "oh but it's renewable" yeah not always, like that investment group that bought a shuttered coal-fired power plant in new york (Greenidge) and brought it back online to use it to mine crypto. After their permits were denied, another group went and tried to buy an operating powerplant (Fortistar). https://www.cityandstateny.com/policy/2023/01/uncertain-fate-upstates-most-controversial-bitcoin-mining-site/382093/ https://www.cityandstateny.com/policy/2023/01/uncertain-fate... https://www.theverge.com/2023/1/17/23558705/new-york-crypto-mining-power-plant-digihost-fortistar-north-tonawanda https://www.theverge.com/2023/1/17/23558705/new-york-crypto-... And even if it's renewable that energy could be offsetting carbon somewhere else on the grid, or stored, or doing literally anything productive (aluminum manufacturing, etc) instead of just generating random nonces and seeing whether they'll validate. Even in best-case scenario, where the energy is literally going unused: why would we want to build a crypto farm to soak up excess hydro energy or whatever instead of an aluminum plant? it's socially maladaptive behavior brought on by speculative fervor and socially irresponsible misallocation/incentives/lack of regulation. Building a Pollution Machine that turns coal into random numbers you sell for money is a Captain Planet villain plot.