If you believe that global warming is a) happening and b) being caused by the carbon emissions from burning fossil fuels, then the invention of bitcoin is great news. Of course, bitcoin is digital and weightless, so it reduces our need to burn fossil fuels in order to transport, store, and count gold, paper, and coin money. But more importantly, no one country has a monopoly on the production of bitcoin. This means bitcoin creates a non-partisan basis on which country leaders can discuss and negotiate contracts designed to reduce or limit the burning of fossil fuels.

Bitcoin is an asset, modelled after gold in its scarcity and production, but with the additional benefits of being digital and programmable. Ever since gold (and silver) was minted into coins, people have corrupted them. First they were corrupted by adding alloys to the coins, and then by over-printing tokens that claimed to represent gold holdings. Since all bitcoin accounting is publicly audit-able, a third advantage of bitcoin over gold is incorruptibility.

Most gold is used exclusively as a store of wealth, while most of the rest is used for the dual purposes of storing wealth and jewelry. Currently, gold mining uses 475 million gigajoules of energy per year (versus 3.6 million for Bitcoin.) Since bitcoin is a gold-substitute, we can expect that as the price of bitcoin rises, the price of gold will decrease. Mines will become economically non-viable and energy used to mine gold will decrease.

Similarly, bitcoin is a superior substitute for traditional banking. The fleet of armoured cars that deliver paper and coin money to bank everyday is producing a not-insignificant amount of carbon emissions, and bitcoin makes this activity completely unnecessary.

However, the most powerful way that bitcoin can help reduce carbon emissions is due to it being a non-partisan and international store of wealth. Everybody wants wealth. But to create wealth requires the production of a good or a service … and this requires energy. It is in the interest of individuals to use the cheapest energy available, which is currently burning fossil fuels. This is the tragedy of the commons in which the sum of individual actions is harming the planet.

To slow the rate at which we burn fossil fuels we need to agree on an arrangement of incentives that applies to individuals and companies around the world. The arrangement could include carbon taxes, cap and trade agreements, and many others. But each arrangement necessarily involves some kind of monetary incentive. Our world has 180 government currencies, each of which can be created by only one country. It’s like like having a conversation with 180 people who speak different languages. It’s no surprise that an agreement is eluded us.

Money is the language of wealth, and bitcoin is the universal. Bitcoin is a framework, that for the first time, allows the world to have an intelligible and transparent conversation about what should be done to slow down the burning of fossil fuels.