I posted this as a comment on another post, but I would like to elaborate a little more.
Original: #23908

Trying to capitulate to the ESG people is the wrong move. Few of them care about the environment. They just want control. We need to double down on a different narrative and expose them as the unempathetic control freaks they are.

Bitcoin is trying to be a borderless, permissionless, and voluntary financial system. It needs to be defended, but we don't want to do that by partnering with morally questionable regimes, drone striking innocents in third world countries, and financially exploiting said countries. The only viable alternative is proof of work, which acts as a force field.

So if anything, Bitcoin needs to use MORE energy. This way, people around the world have unfettered access to the financial system and can use a money that doesn't require coercion, death, and destruction. Bitcoin can be defended by a voluntary energy market.

Even if Bitcoin was powered 100% by fossil fuels, it would have less negative externalities than the fiat system. Fiat funds wars, enables privacy invasion and behavior modification, encourages reckless borrowing and consumption, and subjugates smaller countries economically.

Make the critics check their financial privilege. They can afford to be worried about whatever connection Bitcoin has to climate change. They're not the ones being bombed and exploited. Make everyone watching the debate realize how psychopathic the ESG tyrants really are. They would rather bolster the violent and coercive legacy system than support Bitcoin. Proof of work mining uses more energy than they would like so they would rather us start useless wars in the Middle East.

Flip the narrative on them. Don't give in to their frame.