[rtkwe]

So essentially it only gets worse from these numbers, because right now every block is full so every transaction is consuming the least amount of energy it can if you process less transactions the energy cost just keeps going up.

Also the defense of "the energy is spent securing the blockchain" is missing the point, the blockchain isn't a good unto itself it's only useful as a log of transactions and you only need new blocks when there's transactions and if there are no transactions Bitcoin is basically dead.