What Is the “Tragedy of the Commons” Argument Sometimes Applied to PoW Energy Use?

The "tragedy of the commons" argument suggests that the collective pursuit of individual mining profit leads to an overuse of a shared resource (global energy supply) without individual accountability for the resulting negative externality (carbon emissions). Since each miner is incentivized to maximize their hashing power, the overall energy consumption of the PoW network becomes excessive, a cost borne by society rather than solely by the network users.