We Live on a Small Blue Planet. We Still Think Like a Village.
September 26, 2026
The strait is in the news again, but the argument here isn't about the news. It's about something that has been true since long before there were headlines: we live on one small, interconnected planet, and we still think like a village. Current events are only where the permanent thing shows itself. This is a permanent thing.
Roughly a fifth of the world's oil, and a large share of its liquefied natural gas, passes through a single strait about twenty miles wide at its narrowest point.[1] Close it — and closing it is a decision, made by specific people — and energy spikes everywhere at once. Energy is the input underneath every other input. Diesel moves nearly every physical good at some point, so freight cost rises and lifts the price of all of it. And natural gas makes the nitrogen fertilizer while diesel runs the tractor, so at the farm the inputs to growing food price out and less of it gets planted.
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