The climate crisis is way overblown. I know that's a deeply unpopular opinion, but the stink of politics is all over the climate crisis, and lies are the currency of poltics. It is a political gravy train par excellence, perhaps one of the greatest in history because the doom we're supposed to fear is decades in the future, and by the time we get there and find the world still turning, the whole pile of bollocks will already be in the ash heap of history and long forgotten.
It may be possible to improve proof of work like you say--I don't dispute that. The goal, of course is to maintain decentralization and prevent anyone from gaining control over the system and doing to it what politicians have done to every other monetary system that has ever existed.
The proof of stake stuff sounds nice, but we just watched the centralized POS Solana vote to take over a whale account "temporarily" and do whatever it is they wanted. That doesn't inspire much confidence, and if they can do that to any account they want, then there is no reason to use the coin. May as well use a bank.
There are very, very good reasons not to trust banks and governments. We have watched the Fed monetize debt for decades, essentially robbing the poor and giving to the rich. It is an intergenerational crime at stupendous scale and so immoral it can drive you mad just contemplating it. The have ruined America and hollowed us out.
Now we have an unstoppable inflation and an unwanted military empire mad with power and fraught with arrogance and menace. It's powered by the money they have stolen from the American people and every foreigner who is forced to hold dollars in order to conduct international business.
It is impossible to reign government in at this point, and the only thing that will put a stop to it is our upcoming and unavoidable national bankruptcy, which will be arrived at by the ice of a gargantuan global depression or the fire of an inflationary burnout.
We are watching it happen in realtime now.
Owning real things which cannot be stolen directly or indirectly as by inflation is the only hope of surviving the whirlwind. Gold, bitcoin, land, or a productive business.
To paraphrase Marx, everything else will melt into air.
