One solution to this problem will be to make the amount of power used to mine blocks significantly lower as that will incentivize miners to mine blocks with lowers transaction fees.
To decrease the energy consumption, we should reduce the difficulty. In the case difficulty is reduced much, it would be easy to perform a 51% attack.
to reduce the consumption, we should avoid having (for 165exahash)
11,785,714,285,714 miners CPU mining at 14mhash each. using 325watt per PC
and instead find something more efficient like asics where
1,500,000 mining asics at 110thash using 3250watt per asic
..
...... oh wait its 2022 not 2012. and look we do have asics.. wow amazing, we have more energy efficiency/hash than 2012
cpu vs asic= 7,857,143x efficiency gain
as for any possible discussion about 'carbon footprint' of 1.5mil asics.
well 'guestimates' are that atleast 1m of the 1.5m were using electric from hydro power, not coal, numbers have increased to be more greener in recent year-months