You could also say "more power than 3 large US cities" and your statement would be equally valid, yet much less impressive. It's about as useful as talking about "mid-size rocks". Fist-sized? Refrigerator-sized? Bus-sized?

Did you know that China curtails more hydropower than the global electricity consumption of Bitcoin, than entire "mid-size countries". China literally lets water flow through the dams without generating electricity with the turbines, because they have a hydropower surplus that they can't redistribute through their grid. When you start realizing things like that, you realize Bitcoin's electricity consumption is, fortunately, still a drop in the bucket, compared to the immense waste from, well, everything else.

How much power does the existing system of mining, storage, minting, accounting, etc cost? Let’s compare.

What percentage of financial transactions even involve coinage?

You know, I hear this repeated a lot, but I never see anyone put up numbers. I would be very curious to see your math.