The author seems pretty hung up on the fact that mining consumes electricity, but let's look at the numbers. Miners consume an estimated 108,619 megawatt hours

The author seems pretty hung up on the fact that mining consumes electricity, but let's look at the numbers. Miners consume an estimated 108,619 megawatt hours per day (according to https://blockchain.info/stats https://blockchain.info/stats). This is actually a very high estimate as most miners have switched to ASICs and are consuming orders of magnitude less power, but let's use it anyway. This would add up to about $16m spent per day on electricity. In 2011, the United States alone consumed 367 million gallons of gasoline daily (according to http://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=23&t=10 http://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=23&t=10). At an average gas price of $3.576 / gallon (http://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/pet_pri_gnd_dcus_nus_a.htm http://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/pet_pri_gnd_dcus_nus_a.htm), this would be $1.3b spent per day on gas. Pretty much everything on Earth is going to consume power, but I don't think Bitcoin mining consumes enough to worry about.