Cryptocurrency: Capitalism's Shiny New Climate Buster
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- Published on Sunday, 29 November -0001 16:00
- Written by editor
Cryptocurrency is "mined" in vaults full of energy-guzzling computers. Credit: Coinbuzz.
Cryptocurrency: A New and Dangerous Climate Disruptor
The get-rich-quick scheme, banned in China and elsewhere, is invading U.S. communities unchecked, posing as an “equalizing, democratizing” currency.
It’s not.
In capitalism every few years or decades something new comes along that causes rapid creation of wealth — think microwaves, electronics, and military weapons expansion during the Cold War; semiconductors; the rise of venture capital as an industry; the personal computer craze of the 1980s; the rise of the Internet and hedge funds in the 1990s followed by Internet commerce, genomics, nanotechnology, and the commercialization of information gathering and surveillance (data mining) to benefit corporations and investors.
One of the latest “innovations,” as they’re known in the financial sector, is cryptocurrency, which has exploded since its public introduction in 2013. Related to data mining, cryptocurrency mining has taken off like wildfires in a windstorm — and like those deadly events can accelerate climate chaos in ways we couldn’t imagine just a few years ago.
SCNCC's Maura Stephens and FracTracker Alliance's Karen Edelstein investigated this ominous development and have prepared a report published today on our website at SystemChangeNotClimateChange.org.
Coming Friday on System Change Not Climate ChangeDave Jones reviews Max Ajl's "A People's Green New Deal" from Pluto Press. Max Ajl provides an overview of the various mainstream Green New Deals. Critically engaging with their proponents, ideological underpinnings and limitations, he goes on to sketch out a radical alternative: a 'People's Green New Deal' committed to decommodification, working-class power, anti-imperialism and agro-ecology. Dave Jones shares his ecosocialist perpective from Montana.
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