Raise the Hammer

Great article. I laughed (nervously, I'm actually terrified) at the word 'overburden'. Dang this pesky life supporting planet putting all this forest and biosphere in our way.

It is imperative that we relocate such executives and propagandists to Titan or Io, where they will have infinite supply of petroleum, without turning our Earth into a dead planet that some other species is later figuring out how the previous tenants destroyed themselves.

But we've externalized all those costs, downloaded them to future generations of taxpayers

If collectively as a species we are unable to enforce boundaries around corporate free trade mania, and the get rich quick laziness it breeds, the future human beings are going to have much bigger problems than whether or not they are even still taxpayers. (In my opinion we being indoctrinated into dehumanizing language. We're 'taxpayers' and 'consumers' like locusts in a swarm, rawr!)

Money for remediation - makes sense for a specific site that's already damaged. Or that must be damaged for a good reason. But like OP says, talk of putting a monetary figure on destroying large swaths of Earth's life support systems (not to mention they're the masterpiece of millions of years, unique in a radius of ? light years). Think about the fact that free trade agreements are intensifying this problem worldwide, nations getting sued for trying to protect ecosystems. Other nations, like Canada and Australia, have prime ministers that are relatives of Sauron and just don't care. Our species will be responsible for its own survival until we reach the stars, or our own decline and extinction.

Our species is at a decision node. Do we get our animal habits under control or do we finish consuming the petri-dish.

What would you do with a quadrillion dollars ... on Mars?