Here's a working theory I have. I think there are major still gaps in my understanding, but here goes:

If Bitcoin became a global monetary medium / reserve currency, I think it could make a solid dent in what I see as one of the most profound and systemic environmental problems.

Easy creation of soft money by reserve banks and commercial banks places a massive burden on future populations and ecosystems for this reason: every dollar created today is a future claim on a finite amount of biophysical resources.

New money and new debt claims are made every second of every day, but when these transactions happen and new resources are then owed to someone or something the future, there are no new trees created, no new lithium, oil, sweet potatoes, or cotton.

So under the current financial system we're racking up a massive and unlimited balance sheet in which some entities are rich "on paper" but there will logically come a time when those claims can't be met by biophysical reality.

I wonder if that time is already here, and if there was a run on the planetary resource bank, would there be enough resources to even cash out?

One might argue that inflation takes care of this, as a dollar created today won't be worth much in terms of tangible wealth (eggs, wool socks etc.) in 50 years time, so the debts we are racking up currently are less than they appear to be.

There may be some truth in that, but seems to me in a practical timeline of a decade or two, our I.O.U.s are still vastly outpacing what's actually available to extract from the planetary system, and they get cashed in a lot faster than most resources can regenerate (and lots can't). And even with inflation eroding what the claims are actually worth, our spending outpaces that.

Someone might say that market price signals also take care of this to some extent. If we run short on lumber, as happened recently, the dollar price goes up to better reflect it's scarcity and value. But at the speed new money is being created, I'm not so sure the price signal works as efficiently as it should in theory. I'm wobbly on this point, need to learn more.

In my understanding, this whole biophysical debt situation would be less possible if we had a harder form of money.

Ultimately we exchange money for physical goods and services (even if they are bits of information on silicone), and ultimately we exchange energy to extract or manufacture those goods and services.

So... To finally come to the crux here... I think Bitcoin could fix at least some of this, and maybe a lot of it, as it is a hard money which is directly connected to energy.

Unlike unlimited fiat, we can't just generate or capture more Bitcoin without significant energetic cost, either by mining it directly or exchanging goods and services for it, which also cost energy.

Bitcoin adoption seems like a step in the direction of a monetary system more closely linked to the laws of physics and biology. A system where market forces could send more accurate price signals, and could make more rational and sane decisions about what's worth what, and how much "what" is actually available.