Given that bitcoin mining takes more energy than some mid sized countries now, and serves comparatively few people doing comparatively little, I think we can ha

Given that bitcoin mining takes more energy than some mid sized countries now, and serves comparatively few people doing comparatively little, I think we can happily draw the conclusion that it's massively wasteful already. It's designed to be wasteful. PoW is a race to burn as much energy as possible to get an edge on the other guy.