I think... I understand that... at a logical level I guess.
It breaks my brain a little bit because pretty much everything else in life we try to make more efficient and accessible. We all know that everyone tries to derive as much profit out of every endeavor (regardless of non-monetary costs) so if torturing baby seals produced the cheapest energy that's exactly what profit-driven Bitcoin miners would do.
Within this context the way to make Bitcoin more efficient is what I said in the OP:
You create other tokens that are better than Bitcoin, and Bitcoin drops in price.
We don't see that happening.
Whatever Bitcoin is doing the market has decided it's better than other options.
Making it more efficient means not using it.
Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!
Okay, that was the missing puzzle piece in my brain.
I wonder if Greenpeace had actually promoted another crypto instead of trying to take on Bitcoin directly - they might have had more success. Obviously Bitcoin is super entrenched, but I'm sure with enough normie support it could totally be dethroned... and then Greenpeace could then claim they directly they saved X amount of energy by measuring the before and after Bitcoin energy usage and the before and after of their supported crypto.
Appreciate you helping it click.
Yeah exactly you get it now.
Greenpeace wants Bitcoin's code to not exist.
This is impossible because it's open source.
That code is everywhere.
Begging for the code to not exist is childish and downright embarrassing.
They expect the code to fork and everyone to throw away the old code.
And they expect someone else to do all the work for them.
It's ridiculous.