The Rules of Green

I have mentioned The Rules of Green several times in Rome's Revolution. My thinking was that pollution and global warming would get so bad in the latter half of the 21st century that it would produce continent-sized, Category 7 storms which would transcend the word hurricane.

It was my further assumption that after The Great Dying in 2081 AD, after humanity had a chance to recover, they would blame our people, the Essessoni, for all the ills of the world and vowed to never, ever do things like us again.

Among other things, they created an absolute limit on a person's carbon footprint. They also banned any process that created greenhouse gasses. In fact, in my little story about the aborted novel entitled The Last Cavalier, they wrestled with these issues. They were not allowed to have open flames.

Can you imagine how difficult life would be without fire? They couldn't cook, they'd freeze in the winter, they couldn't boil water. It would be a mess. In the original long-form version of Rome's Revolution, I even had Binoda using a made-up induction oven they found in the shack by the beach.

Ultimately, I rejected the Rules of Green as a way of life. It was just too hard and took too much away from the plot. Now I'm all for reducing our carbon footprint to zero. And I'm all for reducing our emissions of greenhouse gasses to zero as well. Cows, on the other hand, produce an immense amount of methane due to flatulence and belching and there isn't much we can do about that.
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But as a plot device, I had to get down off my soapbox and let the Vuduri have fire so they didn't freeze to death.