25 March 2021
Bitcoin's rise won't cook the planet and avoiding car commutes by working from home won't save it. But both trends still matter.
Driving the news: There's connective tissue between two pieces of news.
Tesla, which invested $1.5 billion in bitcoin, said yesterday that it's now accepting bitcoin as payment for its electric cars as it pledged last month.
- Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives calls it "a potential game changing move for the use of Bitcoin from a transactional perspective." (Note: "Potential" is doing some work there.)
- But digital bitcoin "mining" to process transactions requires lots of electricity, prompting fears that greatly expanding its use — something Tesla won't do alone — will light the fuse on a carbon bomb.
Separately, data analytics startup Watershed — which helps clients cut emissions — just unveiled an interactive tool that creates estimates of remote work policies' climate effects.
- The calculator arrives as many companies and organizations are giving employees the option to continue remote work — partially or completely — after the pandemic.
Why it matters: Scientists say steep emissions cuts need to be happening now to keep the Paris Agreement's goals within reach.
So it's worth paying attention to things that can make those cuts harder, like bitcoin, or potentially easier, like working from home (but it's complicated).
The intrigue: A note from Bank of America Global Research warns that environmentally minded investors already need to pay attention to the "enormous environmental costs of Bitcoin."
- "Given the relatively linear relationship between Bitcoin prices and Bitcoin energy use, it is perhaps no surprise that Bitcoin's estimated energy consumption has grown over 200% in the past two years," BofA analysts find in the March 17 report.
- They estimate bitcoin's energy consumption is already larger than Greece's and CO2 emissions linked to bitcoin are of the same magnitude as the U.S. government and American Airlines.
- Bloomberg has much more.
Yes, but: Estimates of bitcoin's energy consumption vary widely, and future advances in efficiency and expansion of zero-carbon electricity can act as counterweights.
What's next: Meanwhile, the effect of emissions from reshaped work patterns is hard to pin down.
- It involves calculations that consider fuel savings (which may prove pretty minor worldwide), but also heating and cooling homes that are now more frequently occupied, while keeping those systems on in partially occupied offices, too.
- And ending the traditional office model gives workers more flexibility to live farther away — and perhaps in larger homes that require more energy and create longer commutes when workers do travel.
Where it stands: The new calculator is a less granular version of the kinds of services that Watershed promotes to clients, and it's a way of looking at decisions that will become front and center for many companies.
Transcripts show George Floyd told police "I can't breathe" over 20 times
Section2Newly released transcripts of bodycam footage from the Minneapolis Police Department show that George Floyd told officers he could not breathe more than 20 times in the moments leading up to his death.
Why it matters: Floyd's killing sparked a national wave of Black Lives Matter protests and an ongoing reckoning over systemic racism in the United States. The transcripts "offer one the most thorough and dramatic accounts" before Floyd's death, The New York Times writes.
The state of play: The transcripts were released as former officer Thomas Lane seeks to have the charges that he aided in Floyd's death thrown out in court, per the Times. He is one of four officers who have been charged.
- The filings also include a 60-page transcript of an interview with Lane. He said he "felt maybe that something was going on" when asked if he believed that Floyd was having a medical emergency at the time.
What the transcripts say:
- Floyd told the officers he was claustrophobic as they tried to get him into the squad car.
- The transcripts also show Floyd saying, "Momma, I love you. Tell my kids I love them. I'm dead."
- Former officer Derek Chauvin, who had his knee on Floyd's neck for over eight minutes, told Floyd, "Then stop talking, stop yelling, it takes a heck of a lot of oxygen to talk."
Read the transcripts via DocumentCloud.