The scenarios, by illustrating clear-cut situations are not particularly representative of the complexity and ambiguity in our modern reality, but by isolating the factors that complicate ethical consideration, they make these confounding elements more amenable to analysis. The analysis is prescriptive in nature, driving toward a presumption that irreversible environmental degradation is unethical. Let us presume that there are universal ethical principles and that among them, murder is always unethical. Homicide, the killing of one person by another, is murder if it includes both premeditation and malice. Environmental degradation is killing people now and might kill many more in the future.
Environmental degradation is a direct consequence of activities by people.
While in the past it may have been justifiable to claim that we did not know that environmental degradation would kill people, we now know, in many cases, that it does. Continuing to kill people via environmental degradation when this knowledge is available is premeditated and malicious homicide, in other words, murder. Let us explore this equivalence with a series of scenarios. The only catch is that the process produces a toxic waste product. Although you can legally dump this waste product into your backyard, your neighbor gets her drinking water from a well beneath the border between your backyard and hers.