The solution is to stop gas flaring -- that carbon is still getting emitted into the atmosphere, that solves nothing. If it gets turned into power it could be used for something productive, at least.

> The energy use doesn’t scale linearly to transaction activity and is not a prerequisite to the function of a proof of work network

That's just a nice way of saying the bitcoin network cannot scale, intentionally so. Scaling is antithetical to proof-of-waste. At some point you run out of resources to waste.