If someone decided he didn't want to pay for a sewer hookup or a septic field and decided to pipe his sewage out into the street in your neighborhood, would you be in favor of infringing on his choice and his freedom?

This is the kind of question, writ large, that is being raised. It's not about trying to enforce some sort of "will of the elite" on everybody else. It's about making sure that we have sane laws protecting the quality of the air, water, soil, and so on, that we all require to live, in spite of what might be less expensive and more convenient for some people.

In case you hadn't noticed, the financial elite already have expressed their will on environmental matters. It's called buying summer homes in the mountains where the air is better, organizing home owners' associations to control the environment in their neighborhoods (even down to the matter of whether people may have the choice and the freedom to hang laundry outside in their own yards), and making sure that nasty power plants, refineries, etc., are not built where the rich and powerful have their homes. Let somebody else's kid get cancer.

The benefits are not distributed equally. There's not much to be done about that. Let's see if we can do something about the risks, hm?