make up your mind! Proof-of-work does consume energy (duhhhh), and contributes to why Bitcoin is valuable. But if you can see that, how can it be "consuming too much"?

Without PoW, a blockchain would be pretty pointless. Miners could remine the whole chain from the first ever block in minutes/hours, there'd be millions of blockchains trying to pretend each were the real chain. None of the data on the chain would ever be safe, and so no-one would use the system.