But “sustainable” bitcoin mining is an oxymoron, given the enormous amounts of power and water data centers consume. The massive server banks that run nearly every aspect of our digital world churn away in warehouse-like buildings in Phoenix, Las Vegas, rural Washington and Wyoming, each gobbling as much electricity as a small city to process AI queries, cryptocurrency extraction and other aspects of our increasingly cloud-based society. The harder they work, the hotter they get, and the more power and water they need to cool off.

Same as “honorable politicians” and “unselfish capitalists” are.