Personally, I think it would be morally reprehensible to use energy to keep BTC alive if there are vastly more efficient alternatives that achieve the same goal. Though I am interested in counter-arguments.
Other coins have been proposed that either reduce the amount of computation (PPC) or increase the utility of the calculations (XPM). Note that those have existed for a long time and don't require an ICO. Using storage space as a (hopefully?) less energy-intensive contest to replace PoW is interesting although I suspect that Chia isn't truly novel here either.