I'll just put this out there:

Let's say a company spends 50 years building up acid ponds or radioactive tailings or what have you. Then new management comes on board and is appalled and tries to start cleaning things up, but realizes they are falling farther behind, so they divert more and more resources to cleaning up. And it drives the company into the ground because the cleanup now costs more money than the company's revenues.

We punish the current management if they close down to prevent making things worse? We let the millionaires from the last 50 years ride off into the sunset and pin it on the last one out the door?

Edit: typos

Yes, capitalism is very gay that way

This is not a failing of capitalism. It is a failing of regulation. It is the regulation that discourages management from shutting down the harmful action. To escape punishment, they find another job somewhere else and leave the next victim holding the bag.

Because of the regulation, not even environmental activists are willing to take over because the axe falls on them.

So the idea is appealing, and is as good as any opening of the conversation. But then we see the complications and have to be a little sharper in the iteration of the regulation conversation. And the next iteration has some problems, too.

Pretty soon, people complain that we've made it so expensive to close a mine that nobody can afford to open one. And perhaps that's just the truth. Or perhaps we can be clever enough to force the costs lower than the benefits without compromising the future.

If we manage that, it will still probably make mining much much less appealing to the robber barons of today. It might make mining or industry or what have you so much less lucrative that the big money players might as well open a hot dog stand for the same margins.

That's capitalism.

If it means anything to you, your expression is offensive to a lot of people. If you only meant to offend capitalists, you might want to reword that.