Humans are very stupid: Iran war, Strait of Hormuz & climate collapse expose our biggest failure | POV

We are the only species on this planet with the intelligence to understand exactly what we are doing to it. And the only species doing it anyway.

There is a certain kind of madness that only becomes visible when you step back far enough to see the whole picture. We are a species that split the atom, decoded our own DNA and sent a car into space purely for the spectacle of it. Somewhere right now, in a well-funded laboratory, serious and brilliant people are drawing up plans to put human beings on Mars, a barren, frozen, airless rock sitting 225 million kilometres from here. And yet, for all of that extraordinary ambition, we cannot stop blowing each other up on the planet we already have.

The war next to the world's oil supply

In West Asia in 2026, the United States and Israel have gone to war with Iran. Missiles are flying, cities are shaking and children are dying. Sitting in the middle of all of it is a narrow strip of water roughly 33 miles wide at its narrowest point, separating Iran from Oman. The Strait of Hormuz. According to the United States Energy Information Administration, 20 million barrels of oil pass through that strait every single day, amounting to 20 per cent of everything the entire world consumes. One fifth of the fuel that heats homes, runs cars, powers hospitals and flies planes. Since the war began on 28 February, tanker traffic through the Strait has come to a near-complete standstill. A handful of vessels are still making the transit, many under naval escort, while hundreds more sit stranded at anchor on both sides, waiting.

Nobody in any war room seems to be asking the obvious question. When an oil tanker in the Strait of Hormuz is struck, where does the oil go? It does not evaporate. It spills into the water. Greenpeace Germany has described the threat of an oil spill in the Strait as an ecological ticking time bomb, with simulations showing that a major spill could devastate coral reefs, mangrove forests and seagrass meadows across the Arabian Sea and the Gulf of Oman. According to NOAA, the United States' own National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the consequences of a large oil spill on marine ecosystems can be felt for decades, not years. Oil destroys the insulating fur of sea otters and the feathers of marine birds, exposing them to hypothermia. It suffocates coral, poisons fish, shellfish, dolphins and whales, blocks sunlight from reaching the ocean floor and dismantles entire food chains. A war has been lit next to a shipping lane carrying a fifth of the world's oil, and the ocean has no interest in our politics.

The planet is already keeping score