[throwaway_isms]

Does government backed fiat harm the environment? Do the militaries of the nations protecting their government backed fiat have a net positive or negative impact on the environment? Does the infrastructure required by central banks, retail banking have a net positive or negative impact on the environment?

I am not arguing blockchain in various implementations do not harm the environment, only that there are many external costs and collateral damage by the current systems which is often ignored. What is a "normal donation drive" after all? Is it a bunch of celebrities and musicians jumping on private airplanes? Is it a $10,000 per plate filet mignon dinner indirectly supporting bigAG and bigAG animal farming? What external costs have you contributed to just to make a post, are there plastics in your device, was coal burned somewhere or fossil fuel burned to supply parts to your device or charge your device?

Certainly this NFT is not saving lives, the entity behind it was saving lives before the NFT, and certainly they would have continued to save lives without the NFT, but if the NFT generates $2.5M and they can save 1 life with every ~$1,200, then there is a number. Maybe someone who really believes in the argument that saving 1,000 lives is good but not at the expense of the environment which will result in killing us all can step up and pay this entity double ($5M) not to do it, sure its a number reserved for the 1% but its also a number that means nothing to the 1%.

[jokethrowaway]

Look, you'll be hard pressed finding someone who hates the government more than me; even I can tell you that yes, the government wastes a lot of resources and pollutes the environment - but both government and central banking are much more efficient in managing money.

You can't solve a political problem with technology. PoW is incredibly inefficient and wasteful. BTC is slow and wastes a lot of energy, just to maintain consensus.

I'd rather see a system with decentralised nodes I can trust (imagine tons of trustworthy corporations running these instead of the duopoly of Mastercard / Visa) which can process transactions without worrying about consensus and without wasting energy.

Looking forward to PoS, which could bring us closer to that reality.

Even with BTC (or a crypto with PoS) the problems with the governments won't disappear, I'm sure they'll find a way to keep ruining our lives and extracting money from us, even with cryptocurrencies.