[NetBehaviour] The Unreasonable Ecological Cost of #CryptoArt

Ruth Catlow ruthcatlow at gmail.com
Sat Jan 23 12:03:04 CET 2021


Dear Alan,

I really appreciate this generous, honest and reasoned response to my
rebuttal of this project.

I find your arguments very understandable but also rather circular. The
power and logics acting through states and corporations in the form of
extractive capitalism have delivered climate catastrophe.

...So we should abandon the blockchain to states and corporations to
accelerate the process?

The current ecological impact of Bitcoin is indefensible.
So we should, in my opinion, keep political pressure on states and
corporations in all the ways we know how...And get into the middle of
powerful new technologies to rally and clamour for social and environmental
justice- to ensure that they democratically serve the interests of all life
on the planet.

All the people we know experimenting with the social potentials of
blockchain, and who care about this stuff (such as the people at Circles
https://circles.garden/ ) are working with DAI. This uses Proof of Stake (
relatively low energy usage) and stabilises price against the dollar. Its a
middle ground that allows people to explore what is possible while the
technological ecosystem catches up.

To this end, Furtherfield is kicking off The DAOWO Sessions: Artworld
Prototypes - a series of discussion events around artworld prototypes built
in response to potentials for organising using blockchain technologies with
a particular focus on locality and community-needs. They are scheduled for
UK mornings but will be recorded if people are interested.
https://www.furtherfield.org/the-daowo-sessions-artworld-prototypes-reinventing-the-artworld-with-blockchain/

A huge frustration is the lack of communication (well-organised stats,
research and commitments - communicated for business, governments and
citizens) about the coming energy reductions associated with Ethereum 2,
and the different environmental associated with the different technologies.
The way it is currently communicated in the blockchain magazines is not
accessible to most people
https://www.coindesk.com/ethereum-2-0-beacon-chain-goes-live-as-world-computer-begins-long-awaited-overhaul
But maybe this is a function of is newness.

There are researchers deep in the guts of blockchain looking at its ability
to play a part in climate change mitigation - Such as this Blockchain
Application for the Paris Agreement - Carbon Market Mechanism—A Decision
Framework and Architecture
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/12/12/5069/pdf (not an endorsement of this
project - just one of many examples that come up with a search).

If we can find the right research (maybe someone here can point us to it)
we could make an artwork that is a climate impact calculator for all
cryptocurrencies now (till the heat-death of the universe) - that makes
live calculations based on current and predicted protocol, culture and
infrastructure developments of each platform. What would this even look
like - where do we set the frame - what is in and what is out of an
environmental impact calculator?

In the meantime, my favourite, nuanced and well-researched sources of
thinking and experiment are Sarah Friend (who is also working with us on
CultureStake) Laura Lotti, Burak Arikan, Jaya Klara Brekke and a lot of
work coming out of Trust in Berlin.

Warmly
Ruth



On Fri, Jan 22, 2021 at 3:49 PM Alan Sondheim via NetBehaviour <
netbehaviour at lists.netbehaviour.org> wrote:

> Hi, a few questions. I've been interested in blockchain but to be honest
> have been appalled by its energy use as well; that doesn't seem to me to be
> a troll, but an honest reaction. When you say "realise both money and
> governance at a global scale, independent of states and corporations" -
> isn't blockchain itself becoming a state and corporation in a sense? And
> shouldn't in fact the environmental impact be paramount?
> If in the future there will be a "world of clean, limitless, renewable
> energy" - there seems to be three main sources, all of which are highly
> corporate - wind (which is environmentally problematic for the bid
> population); fusion (which I'm hopeful for but will require enormous
> international cooperation and seems to be corporate as well, given the
> enormous technological hurdles) and solar (which requires, at least in the
> U.S. vast tracts of land for the conversion apparatus). I'm not sure how
> this will play out - certainly clean, limitless, and renewable are
> possible, but there are enormous costs involved. My own vision of
> blockchain, definitely from the outside, is that it's problematic in many
> ways, and not democratic, that it's great for money laundering as well as
> art, and that our concerns should be focussed on that (I understand that
> London at this point is the center of off-shore banking, no longer Geneve,
> but I might have my stats wrong).
>
> It seems to me that, to use your term which I think is excellent, the
> future will increasingly be "extractive capitalism." We're also reaching
> the point of the carrying capacity of the planet in terms of resource use
> and population growth; there's an article by Paul Ehrlich and others on
> this -
>
> Underestimating the Challenges of
> Avoiding a Ghastly Future
> Corey J. A. Bradshaw1,2*, Paul R. Ehrlich3*, Andrew Beattie4, Gerardo
> Ceballos 5,
> Eileen Crist 6, Joan Diamond7, Rodolfo Dirzo3, Anne H. Ehrlich3, John
> Harte8,9,
> Mary Ellen Harte9, Graham Pyke4, Peter H. Raven10, William J. Ripple11,
> Frédérik Saltré1,2,
> Christine Turnbull 4, Mathis Wackernagel 12 and Daniel T. Blumstein13,14*
> - which is available online and was originally published in Frontiers in
> Conservation Science.
>
> (I didn't attach it, because I'm not sure it would go through to
> NetBehaviour)
>
> Best, Alan
>
> On Fri, Jan 22, 2021 at 6:16 AM Ruth Catlow via NetBehaviour <
> netbehaviour at lists.netbehaviour.org> wrote:
>
>> 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.
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
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>> NetBehaviour at lists.netbehaviour.org
>> https://lists.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour
>>
>
>
> --
> *=====================================================*
>
> *directory http://www.alansondheim.org <http://www.alansondheim.org> tel
> 718-813-3285**email sondheim ut panix.com <http://panix.com>, sondheim ut
> gmail.com <http://gmail.com>*
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-- 
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.
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