Some of the most popular languages are the least performative (we all know which ones), but they make life easier for developers.
Thankfully, newer languages take performance seriously: Rust, Go, Nim, Crystal. A typed, compiled language gives you good performance for free and a smaller memory footprint (and the reduced computing resources that implies). When you consider the millions of servers in use, that additional language efficiency adds up to a substantial saving in electricity use.
In the computing field, we readily encourage throwing cheap hardware at a performance problem until a program runs fast. It's embarrassing that the "hardware is cheap" attitude is so widespread among developers. Imagine if a manufacturer said that they were going to make energy-guzzling fridges/washing machines or other appliances without regard to energy-efficiency.
In programming, everything is for the ease and comfort of the programmer and anything else takes a back seat - the user, energy use and ultimately the environment.
Aside - If you think programming language energy usage a ridiculous topic, consider the follow:
The creator of PHP, Rasmus Lerdorf, calculated potential CO2 savings due to speed improvements in PHP 7: fewer servers, smaller memory use and reduced CPU activity. (And remember this is an interpreted language.) You can watch a segment from his presentation below where he talks about the calculations he made of potential CO2 savings:
Rasmus Lerdorf – "PHP in 2018" (extract from the 15 min mark): https://youtu.be/umxGUWYmiSw?t=15m16s