The Dome Broke. The Habit of Rationing Shouldn't.

For twenty-nine days the American Southwest did something the plus-two-point-eight world rarely asks and more rarely gets: it lived within a limit. Cooling was rationed by the hour, water by the day, work by the sun, and twelve billion people's worth of appetite was, for one month, governed. Then the dome lifted, and the collective exhale you can feel from Phoenix to Geneva carries a quieter message: back to normal. But normal is what built the dome. I do not romanticize the month — rationing fell hardest, as it always does, on those with the fewest reserves, and no one should mistake suffering for virtue. Yet the discipline worked. The grid held. The reservoirs, though falling, fell slower where people yielded. As the Concordat's water session argues over who cuts first, the honest answer the month offered is: everyone, a little, before it is forced. The dome was a rehearsal. We should not applaud the rehearsal and skip the performance.