We Counted the Water. We Forgot to Count the People.

We are, this century, extraordinary counters. We track the global mean anomaly to a tenth of a degree and hold it at +2.8. We log fusion's share of the grid, the qubits in a processor, the minutes a signal takes to cross to Mars. We have instrumented the planet. And yet, with registered climate migrants approaching 116 million, we cannot agree on the simplest count of all: whether a person who has walked to a new town and stayed there is a resident of it. In Geneva this week, delegates debated whether corridor towns may enroll their newcomers as voters — a question we would find absurd if we asked it of anyone born in place. The instruments are not the problem; the will is. A number is only humane when it grants the person it counts a claim on the place that counts them. We have learned to measure everything except belonging. That measurement, it turns out, was always a choice — and it is one we keep declining to make.