The mystical powers people assign to proof-of-work are quite something to behold. The only thing keeping Bitcoin devs from changing the issuance schedule is social consensus, just like with any proof-of-stake chain.

PoW may tie the token value to a real resource, but that's a correlation where many advocates get the causation reversed. Because of difficulty adjustment, the energy devoted to hashing is the result of the current price, not the other way around.