With no market for "externalities", all the speculation about their value is just speculation. Life cycle analysis (LCA) doesn't sum into a single value for dollar accounting (water, energy, CO2, NH3, NO2, PO4, etc. are apples and oranges).



The resources necessary for the future of man (sustainability) are energy combined with innovation and human creativity. All other "resources" can be made from those. For example, given energy you can make H2 and NH3 from water and air and then use the H2 and NH3 to grow bacteria to make fish food, which then crates your fish fillets for dinner (all steps have been proven).



Using fast reactor technology, like traveling wave reactors, the U238 (depleted uranium) already mined and sitting above ground in storage areas in the US can be converted into a 700 or so year energy supply, which producing far less radioactive waste than our existing nuclear reactors.



"Sustainability" is a very slippery concept that seems to be more political and emotional than useful.



With known detrimental taxes like payroll taxes in most countries, you could do revenue neutral tax shifts from these know detrimental taxes to less detrimental taxes on things like oil and carbon (a tax on oil/carbon does less economic damage/$ of tax than payroll taxes) and obtain an economic stimulus. The decrease in externalities would be a free byproduct and there is no need to know the value of the externalities.

