The local distance ladder measures H₀ = 73.0 +/- 1.0 km/s/Mpc (SH0ES); the CMB extrapolated through ΛCDM gives 67.4 +/- 0.5 (Planck): a 5σ gap that has survived a decade of cross-checks. JWST cleared the Cepheid photometry, ladder-free geometric methods (megamasers at 73.9, time delays near 73) land high, and every proposed repair, early dark energy, extra species, late-time patches, creates new tensions where it relieves this one.
A constant Λ in a homogeneous expansion makes H₀ one global number, identical for every observer in every environment at every epoch. The model has no dial by which the locally sampled rate could differ from the cosmic average, so two correct measurements that disagree leave it choosing which instrument to disbelieve.
SCT replaces the hot-dense-center with a superluminal collision, and the constant with the dynamical ratio Λ_eff(x,t) = C × Λ_parent(x,t) / λ_local(x,t) (P17): the cosmological term becomes a local ratio of parent-frame mesh contribution to local binding, sourced by the progressive weakening of the gravitational mesh through ordinary three-body ejection and dynamical friction (P14, P15, P16). Expansion then carries an environmental signature, and ours is calculable: the KBC supervoid's 20 percent underdensity suppresses the local binding term, enhancing the locally sampled rate by 2 to 3 km/s/Mpc (P19); the mesh's secular weakening since recombination adds another 2 to 3 (P18); and the frame-tree correction contributes 1 to 2 more (P10). The contributions span the observed 5.6 km/s/Mpc gap with no fitted parameters. The mechanism is developed in Paper 7, From Chaos To Cosmic Expansion, with the frame-tree correction in Paper 2, From Chaos To Common Ancestry.
Both measurements are correct, because they sample different things: CMB photons report the volume-averaged expansion of the whole post-recombination universe, while the ladder's calibrators sit inside the enhanced local volume. That is why the ladder-free geometric methods agree with the ladder, the enhancement is in the spacetime, not the rungs, and why no systematic was ever found.
Five premises carry the entire resolution, and the same five resolve the DESI evolving dark energy preference, the Migkas anisotropy, the megamaser value, the age squeeze, and the quasar Hubble diagram: one environmental Λ_eff, read by seven instruments. There is no need for new fields tuned to one symptom.
The registered kill: environment-tagged H(z) measurements in DESI finding no systematic difference between void-dominated and overdensity-dominated sightlines at the 2 percent level, after peculiar-velocity corrections, removes the environmental mechanism; SCT requires roughly 9 percent. The radial profile adds a second blade: ladder-free geometric distances beyond the KBC volume must drift toward 67, and megamaser-class measurements at z above 0.1 reading 73 would break the predicted enhancement profile.