Okay, this is the second time I've seen an argument of the form: If you're not okay with the energy consumption of PoW cryptocurrencies, you can't be okay with X.
The first time I called it out, was someone pointing at the energy consumption of making, transporting, and storing ice cream. You are bringing up gaming.
You are advocating for making our children's/descendants lives worse, our lives worse, and trying to throw a valuable industrial subsidizer of the state of the art in many sub-fields of computer science...
...to defend the least efficient, wasteful,least empowering form of computation we've ever discovered. You're taking and making hostages of something that has objectively wrought joy and innovation to millions of lives.
If you find yourself on one side of an argument, and ice cream/video games on the other... I'd recommend having a long hard think about how you managed to get there.
If it's a hybrid SUV then it's more complicated, but a gas SUV makes sense as a target even with an engine tuned for efficiency.
Video games' secondary impacts to simulation, film making, and modeling have and will provide more benefit per energy used than any proof of work system ever will.
One thing that I find interesting in the electricity debates is that if we took the gaming example and looked at the collective consumption of all people playing video games around the world, you'd arrive at even larger numbers of power usage and emissions. Yet this isn't ever discussed, even though an immutable public ledger like Bitcoin arguably has more utility for society than playing games. A lot of HN users probably play video games, CO2 emissions are of course mainly an issue caused by other people and activities oneself doesn't take part in. In Europe, there's also a trend of public anger against SUVs and there are groups slashing tires of cars, simply based on the shape and ignoring the actual energy efficiency. Happened to a friend of mine who couldn't understand why they targeted her car and left 30 year old gas guzzlers in the same street alone. I think a lot of it has to do with emotions more than rational considerations around sustainability.