[NetBehaviour] The Unreasonable Ecological Cost of #CryptoArt
Ruth Catlow
ruthcatlow at gmail.com
Fri Jan 22 11:48:43 CET 2021
re: http://cryptoart.wtf
I mean... It's a great troll but it's not good enough!
The meme of blockchain's outrageous energy use is a barrier to more diverse
people entering the development space.
Blockchain technologies are important because species collapse and climate
emergency is an effect of the global political economy. Blockchains tech
like cryptocurrencies, tokens, and smart contracts are the only tools we
have (as yet) to organise directly p-2-p at a planetary scale.They are
still new but they offer a way to imagine and realise both money and
governance at a global scale, independent of states and corporations.
The debate about blockchain's environmental impact usually focuses around
its high energy use.
[EXPLAINER: Blockchains' level of energy use are due to the consensus
mechanisms (CMs) they use to verify transactions, and to "mine" currency.
The amount of electricity used varies according to the CM. The two dominant
CMs are Proof of Work (PoW) and Proof of Stake (PoS)
Bitcoin uses PoW and infamously consumes the same amount of electricity as
159 countries. Ethereum (the platform for programmable money - and
therefore the focus of a lot of work on new forms of governance) is moving
to Eth2 a PoS system which uses far less energy. But this is still 2 years
off.]
Questions about the environmental impact of blockchain are important and
difficult to answer. It's right that we assess the impact of Blockchains
but we need better ways to compare all emerging digital infrastructure
ecosystems - including other financial techs, IoT, ML AI, 5G.
A focus on reducing energy use is not enough. As @alsodanlowe put it "It
would be crazy to ban or dissuade colleagues from participating in an
effort to decentralize money away from the forces that create the priority
for fossil fuels (much of it built on debt) just because those forces
exist. PoW is agnostic. Banks and existing oligarchy is not."
https://twitter.com/alsodanlowe/status/1317444999361957891
Blockchain is a future technology. It is built for use in a world of clean,
limitless, renewable energy.
Efforts need to focus here...and on the political economies and the
cultural adoption patterns that they can support and grow beyond
accumulative self-interest and extractive capitalism if we are avoid
accelerating climate collapse.
This morning I retweeted this from Sarah Friend "If I hadn't spent the past
five years working in crypto, I'd probably be moralizing about it too, and
this is perhaps part of why I am so profoundly annoyed by its superficial
detractors - my shadow selves, who know so much less than me and are so
much more sure they're right"
https://twitter.com/isthisanart_/status/1352288565850492928
There's so much more to say about all of this. Especially about the role
that art has to play.
Soon!!!!
On Fri, Jan 22, 2021 at 9:35 AM Annie Abrahams via NetBehaviour <
netbehaviour at lists.netbehaviour.org> wrote:
> The website http://cryptoart.wtf pulls in random blockchain-based
> CryptoArt from the web, and estimates the ecological impact of each work
> in terms of energy consumption (kWh), and greenhouse gases released
> (KgCO2) as a result of blockchain-based transactions relating to the work.
>
>
> https://memoakten.medium.com/the-unreasonable-ecological-cost-of-cryptoart-2221d3eb2053
> _______________________________________________
> NetBehaviour mailing list
> NetBehaviour at lists.netbehaviour.org
> https://lists.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour
>
--
Co-founder & Artistic director of Furtherfield & DECAL Decentralised Arts
Lab
+44 (0) 77370 02879
*I will only agree to speak at events that are racially and gender
balanced.
**sending thanks
<https://www.ovoenergy.com/ovo-newsroom/press-releases/2019/november/think-before-you-thank-if-every-brit-sent-one-less-thank-you-email-a-day-we-would-save-16433-tonnes-of-carbon-a-year-the-same-as-81152-flights-to-madrid.html>
in
advance
*Furtherfield *disrupts and democratises art and technology through
exhibitions,
labs & debate, for deep exploration, open tools & free thinking.
furtherfield.org <http://www.furtherfield.org/>
*DECAL* Decentralised Arts Lab is an arts, blockchain & web 3.0 technologies
research hub
for fairer, more dynamic & connected cultural ecologies & economies now.
decal.is <http://www.decal.is>
Furtherfield is a Not-for-Profit Company Limited by Guarantee
Registered in England and Wales under the Company No.7005205.
Registered business address: Carbon Accountancy, 80-83 Long Lane, London,
EC1A 9ET.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://lists.netbehaviour.org/pipermail/netbehaviour/attachments/20210122/2097e454/attachment.htm>
More information about the NetBehaviour
mailing list