There's no getting around the fact that Bitcoin increases the demand for energy production. Some of that can be very helpful to existing power grids, like when mining increases during periods of low demand which helps support a larger amount of efficient baseload power or when mining ramps up in correspondence with intermittent wind and solar production.

However, the flip side is that profit opportunities are created throughout the entire world to burn more petroleum and dam more rivers even in places with no other corresponding energy demand.

My view is that Bitcoin production is valuable and these are perfectly fine uses of resources, but progressive bitcoiners need to come to terms with this inescapable reality, instead of grasping for rationalizations of how Bitcoin is actually "green".

Oh fuck off. The entire energy debate is a smear campaign, and the only reason it still exists it because it stuck unlike the bitcoin is only used by criminals attack. Bitcoin uses less than a rounding error of the global energy, yet fools like you spread this misinformation.