INFLATION, GAS COSTS, GLOBAL WARMING AND BITCOIN
Inflation is presently rampant in some countries across the world and Covid-19 is held to be one of the causes. In my country Nigeria, Inflation has affected the cost of everyday cooking gas amongst other things, the cost has virtually risen more than 40% since the past one year and the government has no solution to the inflation yet.
This has led to low income families looking for alternative sources of cooking their food. Major alternatives are charcoal and firewood, both gotten from fell trees and many a time, healthy trees are forcefully cut down to produce both charcoal and firewood.
This has led to degradation of green forests necessary for a healthy global eco-system and in some areas causing and increasing desertification, all leading to worsening global warming. And this is the era environmental watchers campaign strongly about going green to reduce carbon emissions, climate change and global warming.
Talking about global warming, it is being held responsible for many natural disasters occurring lately, leading to loss of lives and destruction of numerous properties. So many of these disasters occur yearly all over the world, some examples of disasters that took place in the month of December 2021 are, the US wildfire disaster in Kansas, the US tornado outbreak where Kentucky was particularly hard hit, and in the Philippines, the Super typhoon Rai.
My heart goes out to all those who have lost loved ones and properties during those disasters. And all fingers point to global warming as being the cause.
Block chain mining of Bitcoin too has been accused of increasing global warming, because of the tremendous resources utilized in the mining process, leading to pundits pushing for Proof of Stake(POS) Instead of Proof of Work(POW) as best for validation of transaction for the crypto currency.
This has led to some leaders using it as an excuse to push hard on the growth of crypto currency in their countries. Yes Bitcoin dipped and was trading below $33,000 some days back, it has recovered above $37,000 this week and is presently trying to recoup back some of the recent losses.
The crypto currency as an ecosystem has already grown rapidly across the world and eventually most countries and tech companies if not all, will have no choice than to key into it for survival, that I believe.
And back to global warming, all governments and citizens of the world must do the best they can to protect our environment, If not for our sake let us do it for our children.
