I get that externalities are the key problem. That plus the present impossibility of coherent global action against a global problem.

But as much as I think the human species will win a Darwin award, there's really zero risk of "killing our planet". I mean, one could sterilize the entire surface of the Earth, and the Archaea would hardly notice. They extend kilometers below the surface.

Aren't the major forms of human organization -- corporations and nation-states -- effective ways to externalize costs?

If everyone was seeking enlightenment, there would be no incentives. Incentives are entirely constructions of the ego. Also, most of the posters seem ignorant to the fact that science and rationality are equally as dogmatic as the most fundamentalist religion. All beliefs are false, there is no argument against that.

No contest.

I can't argue spirituality, enlightenment. "If you meet Buddha on the road, kill him."

While I personally believe we'd all be better off reconnecting with awe, wonder, our place in the universe... When's the last time you watched the Milky Way? Heard the birds singing without the roar of airliners? ...Those beliefs aren't actionable.

How is the desire to observe the Milky Way due to a belief in its beauty not actionable?

There are organizations that seek to preserve the possibility to view the night sky with minimal light pollution (http://darksky.org). I went to a campsite in New Mexico that is designated as a dark sky sanctuary recently -- it was amazing.

In fact, you wont even seek to save the planet or to change anything that's happening because things simply are, there is nothing that you'd prefer, extinction or to thrive, pleasure and pain all simply become sensations with no judgement as to whether they hurt or benefit you because those are judgements of the ego https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1FtVLnmuJzg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1FtVLnmuJzg All beliefs are false, upon discovering this you can seek enlightenment because you will not follow the desire for sex, wealth, power, or even the desire for enlightenment itself, attainment is illusion as is thought

"Enlightenment" as a goal has always felt like a sham to me. All understanding is approximate, but comparing science to religion is a false equivalency. Dogmatic belief ends in tautology, a thing is true because it's in the book and the book is true because it says so. A scientific belief is probabilistic and ends in open research questions, the theory of General Relativity models a subset of reality to a reasonable degree of confidence based on the evidence we have collected and makes no greater claims.

Science shows us there is no meaning, purpose, or grand truth. All life is a 4 billion-year old chemical reaction... born by chance in the universe's beautiful dance of physics, fueled by energy and bound by entropy. From dust to dust, the billions that came before us are as forgotten as those that live and those yet to be born.

But, yet, there is meaning.

We don't exist at the abstraction layer of quarks or microseconds, nor do we exist at the scale of galaxies or millennia. Questioning human existence at those levels is a philosophical divide-by-zero. We exist at the human layer, in the context of society, on the scale of under a century. Science gives us a solid foundational existential philosophy for higher order philosophy, which we can probabilistically derive from the evidence available and test as rigorously as any other aspect of our understanding.

Some beliefs are less false than other beliefs:

http://chem.tufts.edu/answersinscience/relativityofwrong.htm

While I get what you're saying, the "fact" of the matter is if you think about it long and hard with an open mind you eventually discover that all belief are false and that there is no gradient of falsehood. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1FtVLnmuJzg

I believe that your belief that all beliefs are false and that there is no gradient to the falsehood is false

There is no true or false, only unasking questions ;)