Air and water pollution is a form of stealing, even though few think of it that way. Because free waste disposal lowers a firm's production costs, profit considerations push corporations to pollute. The consumer then pays the bill in disease, higher health care premiums, a higher mortality rate, lower property values and higher repair costs. Economists call these costs externalities, but they are really a transfer payment that corporate managers impose on unsuspecting citizens. An EPA study found that cutting the sulfates and particulates released into the air each year by just 60 percent would produce health benefits worth between $33 and $74 billion annually. Such pollution violates the eighth commandment, which forbids increasing one's profit at the expense of the consumer, the public at large or nature. God sets the standard in Leviticus 19:35-37, which calls for just balances, weights and measures, and in Revelation 11:19, where He declares that He will destroy those who destroy the earth. Since the earth belongs to the Lord as Creator (Psalm 24:1), no one has the right to take from it or from others what has not been bought or given.

Pollution is a form of theft that falls under the eighth commandment. A corporation that fails to cut its pollution as far as it can, especially when it is legally required to, steals from the public, because it causes medical problems to rise in the area and ruins people's health. God's laws on honest weights and measures (Leviticus 19:35-37, Deuteronomy 25:13-16) place on companies the responsibility to produce a high-quality, fairly priced product. The producer has a rightful claim to a profit, but God does not permit him to increase that profit at the expense of the consumer, the public at large, or nature itself. Pollution therefore belongs in the same category as price-fixing, bribes, discrimination, and defective products, all of which are white-collar thefts committed behind a corporate image. These crimes dwarf the violent crimes of robbery and burglary combined, and God condemns business crimes of this kind every bit as much as the personal thefts of the robber and the burglar.