Luckily there is a whole new generation of PoS networks that don't rely on proof of work. Some even automatically buy carbon offset credits to maintain a carbon neural footprint.
What will it take to end bitcoin's predominance?
I don't understand enough to know if it's a design decision or a technological limitation but the barrier to entry for something like chia also seems much lower, hopefully democratizing the ability to participate in the creation/validation side of the network. Chia requires a single ~100GB plot file (and 332 GiB scratch space when creating the plot) to start farming, which is a pretty low bar. I don't have to buy an expensive special purpose bitcoin ASIC and I don't have to stake the equivalent of 68,416.96 United States Dollar (32 eth) to get started and start contributing.