Large scale multiplayer Four Stage Strategy is basically Existential Chicken. You keep doing the most profitable thing, in the hope that your competitors care more about the continued existence of the commons than you do, and so become comparatively less competitive.
There is a silver lining: the market is, in its perverse way, priority-sorting what people focus on. At some point things will get so bad that addressing them will be more profitable than any other thing companies can do...
The market by itself can never solve this problem because the tragedy of the commons is not addressable by market mechanisms. It is impossible due to the game theory dynamics at play. You need top down force applied to align incentives with the public commons, it's the only way.
100% agreed, of course. I didn't mean the market will solve this problem - just that if things get bad enough, the market incentives will align towards solving the problem... just a tiny bit, just until it stops being profitable enough to continue solving it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nSXIetP5iak