I dunno. Suppose Acme, Inc. starts selling a giant red button. When pressed, it means my boss will decide to give me the rest of the day off, no strings attached. There's a little disclaimer in the fine print that warns that whenever the button is pressed, Acme, Inc. will roll a 6-sided die. Whenever a 1 is rolled, a small child in Kenya will be executed.
Individual users of the product can claim that they aren't directly responsible for the externalities, because "I'm not the one performing the executions!" or "my dice roll was a four!".
Or, perhaps there are business users of the product, who are motivated by cost and nothing else. Good luck convincing a company that ethics are more important than its bottom line.
Sometimes users of a product are so detached from its consequences that they're willing to accept them, even if the true result is horrible. We should certainly hold companies accountable for exploiting human nature in this way.
So where exactly did you read that in the Bitcoin whitepaper? Because everything else is just guessing.
"Gold mining is a waste, but that waste is far less than the utility of having gold available as a medium of exchange.
I think the case will be the same for Bitcoin. The utility of the exchanges made possible by Bitcoin will far exceed the cost of electricity used. Therefore, not having Bitcoin would be the net waste."
I think we're long past this point and we have better alternatives to PoW now.
In the long run miners who do not use untapped (cheaper) renewables are going to be priced out, it just takes some time. That said other protocols much less computationally intensive, such as "Proof of Stake", are starting to be tested.
Anyhow, good idea NVIDIA!