The Corridors Do Not Close for Winter, and Neither Should Our Attention

The temptation, every November, is to mistake a quieter corridor for a solved one. Registered climate migrants have climbed past 124 million this year, and the cool season has slowed the crossings — but slowing the flow into a reservoir does not drain it. More than 124 million people remain sheltered, counted, and settled nowhere, and the arithmetic that matters is not how many arrived this week but how many will still be here when the cold deepens. The relief agencies know this; their winter appeals are already filed. What worries me is the public's seasonal amnesia, the way attention ebbs with the heat that first summoned it. We funded the summer's cooling because the crisis was visible in the thermometer. Winter's crisis is quieter and no less lethal — a tent that shed heat in July will not hold it in January. The corridors were built against one season. The people in them live through all of them. Our attention should learn to do the same.