From the earliest days of Bitcoin, the famed cryptographer and computer scientist Hal Finney, a pioneer of early Bitcoin development and a close collaborator of Satoshi, tweeted his concerns about the long term CO2 emissions from widespread bitcoin implementation.
As Bitcoin adoption accelerates, the energy required to power the network has exponentially accelerated. In turn, the carbon footprint of Bitcoin is contributing to climate change, leading to an increasingly negative perception from media, society, and governments.