Without perceived scarcity of a resource there is little incentive to take the time and bear the costs of managing a resource which is open to all for extraction.
Many resources are in fact scarce but this is not known or not felt by the current users yet. Often it is the next generations that will bear the cost of the over usage and externalization of costs, especially pollution.
Resource scarcity is the basis of economic activity and should be the basis of economic theory. If ethics is combined with economics then some version of collective action (economic action) and collective action theory should be in common use.