and the carbon footprint of mining is currently the size of Argentina's.
What is your source for this?
The world is not going to watch idly as the last % of bitcoins are being mined with an energy budget larger than Europe's.
Much worse things than bitcoin mining are done with much more energy consumption than bitcoin mining, and the majority of people don't seem to care.
Regardless, energy consumption is an irrelevant metric. All these headlines about "Bitcoin uses more electricity than *insert nation here*" are completely missing the point, not to mention usually deeply flawed in their calculations. Carbon dioxide production is a far more important metric. It doesn't matter if bitcoin contributes to 10% of the global electricity consumption if all that electricity is from renewable sources. What we do know is the following:
Bitcoin mining uses around three quarters renewable energy, which is 4x higher than the global average.
Bitcoin mining subsidizes the growth and development of renewable energy projects by acting as a buyer of last resort for electricity which would otherwise be wasted.