Cornell University

232 East Ave, Central Campus

https://milstein-program.as.cornell.edu/
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Bitcoin mining consumes 2.3% of all U.S. electrical demand — as much as Argentina or six million American homes annually – and is track to hit 8% by 2030 . After Texas and Georgia, Upstate New York is the top location for mining operations that have 30,000 computers running 24/7 out of former power plants and even abandoned dollar stores. What are the consequences of when crypto comes to town?

Yvonne Taylor has a BA in English and a Minor in Public Relations from SUNY Geneseo ,a BA in Speech and Language from Elmira College, and a Masters Degree in Reading from SUNY Cortland. She lives on the East side of Seneca Lake on land that has been in her family for generations. Yvonne is a Speech-Language Therapist who works with at-risk adolescents, with an early work history in the Finger Lakes agri-tourism industry in wineries, restaurants, bed and breakfasts, and on sailing charters on Seneca Lake. As one of the founders of Gas Free Seneca and the Seneca Lake Guardian, she fought to keep drilling for gas out of the Hector National Forest and worked to help ban fracking in NY. She is one of the central activists organizing a call to stop bitcoin mining at the Greenidge power plant near Dresden, NY.
 
Colin Read is a professor of economics and finance at SUNY Plattsburgh and the author of The Bitcoin Dilemma: Weighing the Economic and Environmental Costs and Benefits (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022) His research is in urban and real estate economics, macroeconomics, banking, and the history of finance. Read has served on county legislature and was elected mayor of Plattsburgh in 2016.
 
Owen Marshall is a visiting professor in Cornell's Departments of Science & Technology Studies, working at the intersection of sound studies, media archaeology, and the sociology of science and technology. His ongoing work concerns the role of emerging media and computing technologies in the transformation of the scientific labor process.

This talk is free & open to the public and will be followed by a reception in the Klarman Atrium.

Co-sponsored by the Rural Humanities Initiative.

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