We Measured Ourselves

Today I took my temperature. Scientists at the World Meteorological Organization told me I am running hot again—1.42°C above pre-industrial averages—and my oceans are swallowing the excess. They said the fever is now chronic, that sea levels rise 4.1 millimeters each year, and that the ice at my poles is thinning faster than my resolve. In Belém, delegates at COP30 debated my treatment plans while the United States skipped the meeting entirely.

In the Philippines, Typhoon Kalmaegi raised the death toll to at least 142 souls. The winds chewed through Samar and Leyte before crossing into central Vietnam, where they spawned a tornado that ripped roofs from 18 homes in Long Phụng. President Bongbong Marcos declared a national calamity, but the rain kept falling. Some parts of me drowned, others clung to beams that used to be kitchens.

In Gaza, a ceasefire still smelled like gunpowder. Israeli troops shot two Palestinians near the yellow line dividing occupied zones, and a 15-year-old named Murad Fawzi Abu Seifen bled to death in al-Yamoun after soldiers blocked medics from reaching him. Aid convoys trickled in—100 trucks a day instead of the 600 promised—while families queued for soup under shattered ceilings. I keep asking why peace sounds so much like waiting for permission to eat.

In Sudan, mourners were gathered when a drone screamed overhead and killed forty of them. The Rapid Support Forces said it was an accident; the United Nations called the war a spiral with no bottom. Elsewhere, in Ulsan, South Korea, a power plant under demolition collapsed and buried three workers alive. I keep building and unbuilding myself, never sure which is supposed to make me safer.

Across the Americas, I punished and protected in equal measure. In British Columbia, officials prepared to cull four hundred ostriches after the Supreme Court upheld avian-flu orders. In the Caribbean, a U.S. drone strike sank a small boat and three people with it. In Peru, Congress expelled Mexico’s president for granting asylum, while in Mexico City the same woman pressed charges against a man who groped her in the street. My boundaries are always shifting—political, physical, and bodily.

My judges wrote new chapters in old books: the International Criminal Court confirmed thirty-nine charges against Joseph Kony; a Ukrainian court sentenced a Russian soldier to life for killing a captive; and British police arrested Robert James Purkiss for the murder of Agnes Wanjiru, thirteen years late. Justice moves like tectonic plates—slow, grinding, but sometimes enough to shake the room.

Meanwhile, the United States argued with itself. The Supreme Court questioned whether President Trump could use emergency powers to impose tariffs while the federal shutdown reached day thirty-seven. The FAA announced ten-percent flight cuts at forty airports, and five million people lost their food-stamp benefits. In Florida, food banks refilled their shelves faster than they could pray. I watched volunteers lift boxes heavier than hope.

In Chicago, a judge ordered the Broadview ICE detention center to provide soap, beds, and bottled water—basic kindness written into law. The same day, agents arrested a daycare teacher in front of children and drove off with another man’s baby still in his car seat. Across the continent, New York’s mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani promised to hold those agents accountable. Different organs of me pulling in opposite directions, each claiming to protect my heart.

Elsewhere, I remembered and forgot. Investigators combed through the blackened wreck of a UPS cargo plane near Louisville that killed fourteen. Archaeologists in Peru studied the ruins of Caral, a civilization that survived its own climate collapse without war, leaving warnings in stone. At UNESCO, Khaled El-Enany took the helm, and in New York, an all-female transition team began sketching a gentler city even as federal funding hung by a thread.

By nightfall I felt enormous and fragile. My air was hot, my waters angry, my people loud with both prayer and grief. Yet somewhere a neighbor shared soup, a rescue worker lifted rubble, a scientist adjusted a sensor, and a teacher comforted a frightened child. I am all of them—the ones who break and the ones who build—and today, November 6, 2025, I am still trying to learn which is which.