Certain crises quickly cease to belong to the front on which they were born. They come out of the smoke, from the launches, from the military communiques, and are put back into circulation within the things that support everyone’s material life. Hormuz belongs to this category. An enormous share of the world’s oil and gas passes through there, but the point also lies elsewhere: there we see with an almost offensive clarity how the fossil system continues to transform a war into something larger, more tenacious, dirtier. A conflict begins with bombs and continues in the markets, in insurance premiums, in routes, in the fears of those who govern. The climate, in between, takes the hit twice.
The first weeks of the war had already left a heavy toll. An estimate from the Climate and Community Institute calculates 5.054 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent (more than Iceland produces in an entire year) in the first 14 days of fighting from February 28 to March 14, 2026. In about two weeks the war has polluted as much as a million gasoline-powered cars and caused climate damage in excess of 1.3 billion dollars.
Inside there are destroyed buildings, burned fuel, military fuel, lost vehicles, missiles and drones. War enters the climate in an immediate, brutal, physical way. Then a second half begins which goes almost unnoticed.
That data is also significant for another reason: it dismantles a comfortable Western habit, that of treating war as if it were separate from the climate crisis. War uses fuel, sets fossil infrastructures on fire, devastates entire cities and then requires cement, steel, transport and energy to rebuild. The report’s methodology brings together direct and indirect emissions, using IPCC and cross-source factors on buildings, vehicles, munitions and fuels affected or consumed. The document also states that the estimate remains conservative, because the data collected in a high intensity conflict suffers from censorship, uncertainty and continuous updates.
Meanwhile the situation has worsened. On Monday 13 April 2026, Washington announced the blockade of maritime traffic to and from Iranian ports after the failure of talks over the weekend. At the same time the tankers began to stay away from the Strait of Hormuz, while Tehran raised its military tone. According to Reuters, the measure aims to stop around two million barrels a day of Iranian crude heading to the global market and comes at a time when several tankers have reversed course or remained on hold.
Here the climate discussion changes scale. The damage is not confined to the smoke from the explosions. It continues within the geography of oil. The Strait of Hormuz remains the most delicate energy passage on the planet: the US Energy Information Administration recalls that in 2024 an average of 20 million barrels per day passed through it, approximately 20% of global consumption of petroleum liquids. Before the war, about a fifth of the world’s oil and natural gas exports also passed through there, with much of the cargo going to Asia.
The old reflex with which the world continues to save the system
The American threat on Hormuz moves within an already used script: raise the conflict to force a de-escalation. It is a worn-out scheme, and for this reason more fragile. The crude oil market continues to hope that it still works. As the threat came back on the table, Brent rose about 8% to $102.80 a barrel. Since the beginning of April, only limited traffic has passed through the strait, far from pre-war levels, and the Kpler data cited in the commentary show a very limited number of ships managed to transit in those days.
As long as the story is told only as a question of prices, the most interesting part is lost. Hormuz is where we see the automatic return of fossil blackmail. Tension rises, and the political system immediately starts protecting flows, barrels, maritime corridors and export infrastructures. The language changes rapidly: first war, then energy security, then the containment of economic damage. The climate crisis, which should be at the top of the priorities precisely because these issues show all the fragility of the model, slips to the side once again. The scene always remains the same, just with more exposed nerves.
For Italy the point lies in the dependence that comes back to command
Italy knows well what it means to live within a vulnerable energy structure: exposed industry, unstable bills, sensitive supply chains, supply anxiety that subsides as soon as the fossil fuel corridors begin to tremble again. Every crisis on Hormuz reopens that wound. The problem goes beyond the possible increase in prices. A distant conflict continues to command the priorities of a European country across a sea passage. It is a form of political dependence even before economic.
The stability of the present remains hanging on the military hold of fossil choke points that everyone knows are fragile, congested, exposed, blackmailable. Just look at the conditioned reflex. The tension grows and the world immediately returns to thinking as if oil were still the only understandable language in serious times.
This strategy is less like a sophisticated game and more like a basic game that goes nowhere. The point is not whether the threat will work or not. The point is that, each time the script repeats itself, the damage becomes more structural. The economy is wearing down, markets are becoming more rigid, the horizon of fossil fuels is being prolonged, and the moment when energy vulnerability really stops being dominant is receding. The bombs make noise. Hormuz works slower. But then it stays. And it leaves longer marks than it seems.
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