[gervase]

Pollution is a commonly-used example of a negative externality [0], or a way to shift business costs onto a third party.

In the parent example, the implication is that rather than investing money in reducing pollution, that money can instead by returned to the investors as dividends, and the global public must bear the impact of the unmitigated soot emissions.

The "wealth transfer" in this case is represented by the costs absorbed by the public (in terms of increased healthcare costs, endangered coastal real estate, disaster relief costs, etc which may result from pollution and/or anthropogenic climate change) being transferred to the investors/owners/operators of the polluting companies in the form of reduced spending on mitigation technology.

That was my interpretation of the parent's meaning, at least. At the time I posted this comment, there were three different interpretations of the same comment, which is very interesting.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Externality#Negative