A few days ago, I was watching a video where a man took a walk through a Los Angeles park, which was quite run-down. Most of the comments were complaining about the "junkies" milling about, about how they'd made the place dirty and dangerous. I thought this was peculiar, since everyone (the idea that they were
all drug addicts or homeless people was doubtful) seemed to be keeping to themselves. The area WAS trashed, but the overflowing bins suggested to me that the city wasn't putting many resources towards upkeep. Which itself suggested that the order of events was more something like:
>Lax maintenance and poor accessibility (remember, LA) made the park undesirable for families to visit.
>"Undesirables" began frequenting the park, as their chances of being harassed by police at the behest of the families who were no longer visiting was much lower.
So, what is commonly seen as a tragic outcome caused by individuals abusing resources is really a matter of authorities abusing their prerogative to hold or not hold to what could reasonably be considered their responsibilities.
For your examples: there are international laws and agreements that "govern" (maybe more like "suggest") best practices wrt fishing and carbon emissions, based on publicly-available research and inquiry. Further, the entities causing these issues aren't "free radicals"; they're mostly formally-incorporated organizations that are subject to state regulation and their own policies (which, when known by the public through their actions, are subject to public pressure - either wallet diplomacy or the threat of further regulation). It's a choice for the US government to not hold companies accountable, or to not ratify, say, the Kyoto Protocol, or to ignore studies on fishery health in favor of placating the fishing industry. Same for every other country. And every country has some ability to influence others through the shape of their relations. I suppose you could exclude pirates.
Tragedy of the commons assumes that individual actors haven't bound themselves together by some kind of expectation or obligation. The most authoritative version of that is government, of course, but you can have lesser agreements. In those cases, it's not merely a matter of individual entities abusing resources, but of flaunting self-imposed "management."
^This is the most important part of this comment, sorry for taking a while to get to it.