Weird/Nice that it's a "novel" way when this forum alone's actually been the source of so much related suggestions (think I've posted at least twice as well even on commerce-level natural gas generators) -- my state's been flaring so much over past 3 decades and am sure it's the same in most oil producing country like Argentina.
My country has been flaring Gas for that long too but only if these countries had a government that could see how that energy could have been channeled to Mining
BTC for the betterment of their economy but maybe, they are just transfixed to the sector they already know and don't want to explore the new option of generating Income.
I hope this event coming out of Argentina will be a good example for other governments to follow in regard to gas flaring.
I think it's more of a basic underlying need for development. I'd rather we develop gas piping in my state and share it with other countries on our island (3 countries on my huge island). Or make it more efficient and cheaper for people to use that, with the development of natural gas generators in favour of more expensive, more dirty, diesel.
It's just a lack of political will, and more profitable to flare it all off.
If you provided cheap (clean too) energy to people, they'd be doing a lot more commerce, mining would even be an extra revenue generating, which is extremely useful to have in bleak economy outlooks (which we've had since Covid).
So yes, Bitcoin mining, but it is a bigger, far bigger issue.