>we keep having articles saying that bitcoin transactions are a waste of energy, and everyone ignoring that the block reward halves every few years until it drops to zero, so it not built with the incentives to use this much energy forever.
Bitcoin transactions aren't a waste of energy, a high bitcoin valuation is an incentive to "waste" energy (commit resources to mining).
The block rewards will drop over time, but they're denominated in BTC, so it's hard to predict what the incentive to mine will be.
It will be a long time before block rewards reach zero.
But not such a long time before block rewards are dominated by transaction fees, a few decades at most (in two decades, the block subsidy will be 32x smaller).
Bitcoin transactions aren't a waste of energy, a high bitcoin valuation is an incentive to "waste" energy (commit resources to mining).
The block rewards will drop over time, but they're denominated in BTC, so it's hard to predict what the incentive to mine will be.
It will be a long time before block rewards reach zero.