Many people think that mining does not produce social value, so mining is a pure waste of resources. This is a misunderstanding.
Mining is not a waste of energy. I consider something to be a waste when the result of the effort or in this case the energy used leads to noting of value but we already know that BTC is valuable. So by this argument alone, BTC mining is definitely not a waste of energy.
For sure, mining is now becoming more difficult and more and more hardware is required ruling out individual miners but it goes to show how far this process has become - such a complex social aspect that now governments are finding ways to reduce its size.