“THE ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES WITH CRYPTOART WILL BE SOLVED SOON, RIGHT?"
By: Everest Pipkin
Tags: Environment, Ecology, Nft, Cryptoart, Cryptocurrency

And yet, I see you live in society.

Every time the ecological cost of cryptoart comes up, inevitably someone comes in with “What about cars? What about shipping? What about flying to art fairs? Aren’t the carbon footprints of all of those things worse?”

Despite this being enormous “ah i see you critique capitalism and yet you live in society, how curious” energy, I do want to respond- both because yes, other things do have big carbon footprints and also before someone @’s me with it again.

There are a few things wrong with this approach:

First, it is not a gotcha that there are worse things in the world than the thing you are currently talking about. I am capable of hating cryptocurrency AND capitalism AND art fairs. I contain multitudes.

I’m dedicated to the long work of trying to disentangle society from capitalism and the art world from the speculative art market. But it is so rare that we have a chance to look at a harmful technology before it is deeply embedded in societal systems and simply say: no. We can still do with with NFTs. We can still just not.

Secondly, there is no guarantee that an NFT market replaces something like the art fair (and certainly won’t change things like “cars”).

If anything, a robust NFT market bolsters the idea of the art fair or the blue chip gallery, which have always been about investment, speculation, and resale- even when the work bought or sold is also talked about for its aesthetic, conceptual and emotional qualities.

Not every piece of artwork purchased in a blue chip gallery or at an art fair is intended for eventual profit at an auction house (many simply go on to live on the walls of homes), but every artwork from these kinds of spaces has the capacity to function at auction.

When bought, these artworks have a record of sale and statements of authenticity, and are often couched as “a good deal”- this artist showed at X or Y gallery, they’re undervalued, they’re a hot investment opportunity. And from that point on, it is always up to the purchaser of the work- not the artist- how that piece will function in the future; as an artwork, as a futures investment stored in a warehouse, as a tax shelter, or as somewhere in between.

Some have said that the contemporary art market’s sudden interest in NFTs is due in part to this year of quarantine, where art markets are having to look at other models than the traditional wine-and-dine at Basel to attract buyers, but my bet is just that the art market is just remarkably good at smelling money.

If I had to guess, I’d say the NFT market will replace absolutely nothing- will cause no wasteful, physical art fairs to close- but will instead be folded into existing art fair and gallery contracts. This is because cryptoart is a perfect match to how the art market already functions.

Much like the world of blue chip, some NFTs may be bought and sold simply as artworks, intended for personal collections and acquired for aesthetic, conceptual, or personal reasons. However, every single one is made from the outset to be liquidated- an asset first, artwork second. They are images attached to dollar figures, not the other way around.

Third- the green energy solution?

A generally accepted number is that about 39% of PoW mining runs on renewables, and that number could increase with attention, investment, and time (a 2019 report from, uh, a cryptocurrency investor puts the number at more like 74% for Bitcoin in particular). Would this make the cryptoart market ethically viable?

Green energy is incredibly important for the continued future of society, but it isn’t free energy. Cost of production for solar cells, wind turbines, hydroelectric dams and thermal capture are still sunk ecological costs in mining, fabrication, and construction. Per usual, they are better but not best. Best is simply to reduce consumption as much as possible.

Furthermore, the “green energy” of cryptocurrency mining generally does not operate on a separate power grid. Using green energy sources still means pulling power out of a system also used to power houses, which drives up cost and encourages and funds new energy capture projects, including in coal, oil and gas.

(As a personal note, I’m writing this essay from the Gulf Coast of Texas, where our power only recently returned after a week of outages because of grid mismanagement, scarcity and greed.)

Fourth- the lifestyle offset.

A very common line of justification is the “I’m using my income from NFTs to replace other wasteful aspects of my lifestyle.” I’ve seen artists take this line of approach over and over, a “I don’t have to fly to sell work anymore so it evens out.” or “I don’t drive a car or import expensive art materials!” or “shipping prints isn’t environmentally friendly either!”

There is an inherent numbers problem here- it is actually pretty hard to reduce your energy consumption enough to offset the cost of minting an NFT. They are so wasteful that it would take years of careful planning to generate enough “saved carbon” to justify burning it all in one fell swoop on a minted NFT.

Because of this, some artists have opted for carbon offset credits instead, promising to reinvest some portion of their sales into forest restoration, wildlife conservation, green energy infrastructure or any of the thousands of other greenwashing schemes that allow you to purchase peace of mind.

Carbon offsets are, and I cannot stress this enough, a fake idea. Unlike direct lifestyle changes which at least are under your immediate control, carbon offsets are calculated as a hypothetical benefit in a hypothetical future that we may or may not live to see. Planting a tree does not guarantee that it will survive, thrive, or recreate the forest. Carbon offsets as an industry also have little to no regulation; often times the tree is never planted. This is well documented.

Carbon offsets do not do what they promise, which is offset. But even if they did, you cannot use lifestyle or credits as an offset when you are actively building a system that does harm. Even if you, personally, come out more or less even on the books- to do so is to loan your power to a worldview that has doubled down on worth being tied to completed labor and spent physical resources.

To do so lends your validation to the entire concept of cryptocurrency, aspects both inside of and outside of your direct control. It invites others into the space. It builds power.

It is, as an artist and an individual, to say “I believe that burning energy makes value.” It says “this is worth it to me.”

Fifth- the more efficient NFT.

There has been a lot of talk about “finding more efficient NFTs”. There is even a bounty!

There are various ways to reduce wastefulness, including more considered block sizes in the blockchain, removing pay-for-priority gas, scaling optimizations, and moving to non-Ethereum blockchains.

I doubt it will be very long before there is a “more ethical” NFT marketplace, one that has taken these steps to ensure a slower, more considered NFT minting and selling model. (Foundation.app proudly made the switch to xDai in October, but quietly returned to the Ethereum blockchain sometime since.)

This desire for an eco-NFT, one that dramatically reduces energy waste, is not in and of itself the worst idea. The trouble is, we already know how to do these things. We know how to reduce energy waste, to reconsider block sizes, to use sidechains, to move to alternate proofs. The technology is there; the market has not followed.

This is because cryptocurrency and cryptoart are not bad for the environment accidentally- they are not simply bolted onto this blundering machine and cannot just be taken off (the technology of a proof of work-based system almost guarantees this). And even if we manage to reduce those costs to a palatable number, cryptocurrency AND cryptoart are still fundamentally valuable because they burn energy.

To repeat the common maxim, the purpose of a system is what it does. Cryptocurrencies turn sunk energy cost into futures.

If that is the value system we are building, we are doomed.