The fact that their profits are predicated on planetary devastation helps explain why do-gooder discourse among the powerful is giving way to open expressions of disdain for the idea that we owe each other anything by right of our shared humanity.

AI’s “profound” energy needs are projected to triple in the next few years, with much of it coming from fossil fuels, because nuclear can’t come online fast enough. This planet-incinerating level of consumption is necessary, he explained, to enable an intelligence “higher” than humanity, a digital god rising from the ashes of our relinquished world.

At the dawn of Trump’s first term, the New Yorker investigated a phenomenon that it described as “doomsday prep for the super-rich”. Back then, it was already clear that in Silicon Valley and on Wall Street, the more serious high-end survivalists were hedging against climate disruption and social collapse by buying space in custom-built underground bunkers and building escape homes on high ground in places like Hawaii

Examples of the Overton window shifting historically include women’s suffrage, abolishing of slavery, and the growing acceptance of IVF, to more contemporary examples like Bernie Sanders’s advocacy for universal health care, gay marriage, and concern for animal welfare.

Another strategy is to try to avoid playing a game of political tug-of-war altogether. As the economist Robin Hanson puts, it: pull the rope sideways. Instead of joining a side and pulling on the rope (of the Overton window), pull it sideways in a direction no one will resist.