It is a synthetic problem of the commons: they can incur expenses that someone else pays off. As you're hinting, it'd be trivial to shift the incentives via taxes, clean up liability etc.

A similar problem exist with the petroleum economy vs climate change.

And a third case is that the residents near the oil filed bear the burden while the benefits, both huge and trivial, are gained by individuals far away.

Each of which would be addressed if the distribution of power were different.