While We Watch Iran, the Planet Keeps Burning

The planet is now more out of balance than at any time in the observational record. That’s not a slogan from activists. It’s the warning of the World Meteorological Organization. Its latest report shows that the last 11 years were all the hottest years ever recorded, that greenhouse gas concentrations are now at their highest in at least 800,000 years, and that Earth’s energy imbalance has reached a record high.

Most people hear that and think of hotter days, bigger fires, and nastier heatwaves. Yep, all of that matters. But the deeper story is even more alarming. More than 90 per cent of the extra heat trapped by greenhouse gases is being absorbed by the oceans. The seas have been shielding us from even more atmospheric warming, but they’re paying the price. Warmer oceans mean coral bleaching, stronger storms like cyclone Narelle that just hit Exmouth, rising seas, disrupted marine ecosystems, and a further loss of the natural stability in which human civilisation developed.

Sometimes the scale of this crisis is so large that ordinary language fails. So here’s one of those brutal comparisons that cuts through. In 2025 alone, the upper ocean stored an extra 23 zettajoules of heat. That’s roughly the equivalent of 12 Hiroshima bombs exploding every second for a year. It’s a grotesque image, but perhaps that’s exactly what this moment requires. We’ve normalised the abnormal for so long that polite phrasing no longer works.

And just as the climate system is lurching further out of balance, the world’s attention is fixed elsewhere. Right now, people are transfixed by the war in Iran and the wider turmoil in the Middle East. The human suffering is real and immediate. But there’s a bitter irony here. War isn’t separate from the climate crisis. It’s part of it. Militaries are significant greenhouse gas emitters, and their emissions are undercounted and under-scrutinised.

The Iran war drives that point home with horrifying clarity. New analysis shows the first two weeks of the conflict generated roughly 5.6 million tonnes of CO2 and related greenhouse gases, with major sources including bombed oil facilities, combat fuel use, and the destruction of homes and other infrastructure that will later need carbon-intensive rebuilding. At the same time, the conflict is disrupting fossil fuel supply chains and rattling energy markets in ways that could lock in more coal, more gas, and more emissions. And politicians are taking advantage of that - just watch Angus Taylor’s latest antics.

So while the headlines tell us to look at the bombs, the missiles and Trump’s latest rants, the deeper truth is that these crises are intertwined. Fossil fuels help drive conflict. Conflict entrenches fossil fuel dependence. Militarism devours money, political attention, and moral seriousness that ought to be directed toward decarbonisation, resilience, and justice. None of this is accidental. It is a system protecting itself.

Australia should hear this loudly. We can’t keep approving new coal and gas projects while pretending to care about the climate. We can’t keep talking about security as if it has nothing to do with an overheating planet, collapsing ecosystems, and growing human vulnerability. And we can’t keep treating war as a distraction from climate breakdown when war itself is helping accelerate it. The politics of delay and the politics of militarism aren’t separate failures. They are two faces of the same failure. That failure is an inability, or refusal, to confront the truth.

The UN Secretary-General says the climate is in a state of emergency. He’s right. But I think his words are too diplomatic. An emergency suggests a sudden break from normality. What makes this era so dangerous is that the rupture is happening in plain sight and is still being treated as normal. Another report. Another record. Another cyclone. Another flood. Another war. Another excuse. Another fossil fuel approval. More attacks on renewables and EVs from Angus Taylor.

This is what collapse looks like when it wears a suit and speaks the language of politicians and fossil fuel magnates who care only about power and short term gains.

We can’t negotiate with physics. We can’t bomb our way to peace, burn our way to prosperity, and spin our way past the laws of Nature. The oceans are overheating. The atmosphere is thickening with pollution. The world is destabilising before our eyes.

Photo: Bloomberg.