If fossil fuels producers had had the same level of awareness of environmental issues when that industry began we might not have the issues we have now, I think it's a poor comparison, my comment was acknowledging the issue and positing that an iteration of the technology could mitigate the problem.

Are you also opposed to EVs which also have the problem of high initial costs for early iterations of the tech?

Costs (of EVs) are passed onto the consumer and thus self-regulate, whereas many of the costs of crypto's wasteful energy usage are distributed among society.