Earlier quoted context omitted.
this is pretty much the same thing as saying that "guns kills people" is nonsensical because there are many non equivalent ways a gun could be involved in killing someone
wow, it's amazing how you got that completely backwards. saying "guns kill people" is exactly the same as saying "bitcoin uses energy" - it's a way to shift blame from the real perpetrator to the instrument. perpetrator in this case being people who want to secure their assets via energy expenditure. if bitcoin disappears - exactly the same amount of energy will be used because the cat is out of the bag - satoshi sho…
The statement is essentially "guns are bad, more guns means more death, less guns means less death" which is far from nonsensical independently with how much you agree with it or not.
Bitcoin transaction use energy. The proof is that if no more transaction happened no energy would be spent in bitcoins.
saying that it is the security requirements that waste energy is like saying that bullets are the real culprits not guns: they go hand in hand. Bitcoin without security is no bitcoin at all.
It is technically feasible to have bitcoin with no security just like you can have an army with rifles and no bullets.
In both cases obviously the root cause is people, we still haven't found out neither our lucertoloid overlords nor the simulators to blame, so it is lapalissian: "people are the cause of people's action" but it is not a particularly useful rebuttal to many arguments.