In Henry Shue’s influential 1999 article “Global Environment and International Inequality,” he argues not only that developed nations bear a disproportionately large burden of the costs involved in fixing the environmental problems caused by industrialization and globalization, but also that members of developing nations are morally permitted to cause environmental degradation insofar as they have been unfairly prevented from reaching the appropriate threshold of dignity and respect. I maintain this established framework of duties and permissions and draw ethically relevant parallels between industrialization in general and technological advances in particular, with a special focus on AI systems. I contend that the global environmental effects of AI systems throughout their life cycles create not only the kind of global injustice that Shue and others refer to but also the concomitant and legitimate moral allowance that certain human groups may engage in environmental degradation insofar as these technological advances are required for them to meet the requisite threshold of dignity and respect that remains unmet in many parts of the developing world. Thus, I uncover a serious and overlooked ethical shortcoming involved in the use of AI by those in developed nations. By promoting AI use in situations of global environmental inequality, AI proponents in the developed world are creating the conditions for morally permissible environmental degradation by others. I argue that it is morally impermissible to create the conditions for morally permissible environmental degradation by others. I then entertain and respond to candidate objections, including an objection drawn from critiques of catching-up development, as well as an objection which suggests that this argument promotes the stereotype that those who suffer from global inequality are morally second-class.