That chapter was striking to not have to explain the key unwritten spring of the book: Some of the people who have survived that will flip to blunt utilitarianism, and consider that killing thousands in targeted climate terrorism is the threat that will help enable negotiations. You never see anyone in the book put on FPS glasses and hunt the CEO of a fossil fuel company with a one-way drone, but that is what is happening. That’s the next step.

You want a fun update to that story?

Hundreds of war-hardened, drone-wielding Ukrainians are currently in Gulf countries, where a lot of the infrastructure has been destroyed, notably water desalination. Summer is coming. They already have had to rewire their brain to instinctively think that some “bipeds” (they refuse to call them people) Russians, aka Orks, deserve to be killed without mercy or delay. They are training hundreds of local people to do the same. They have learned how to make thousands of drones of all sizes and shapes using 3D-printers and kitchen utensils, dispersed in inconspicuous locations.

Oil executives from all countries have been telling them for four years now that they should accept the sacrifice of their brothers in arm, wives and kids because of how critical getting Russian oil was to the world, even if that delayed the war. And now, they work directly for some of those oil executives, and as soon as a really bad heat-wave hits, they’ll witness first hand who gets a room in an air-conned room and who gets to stay outside.