September 2026: The world today, as seen by one Polish guy

2026年9月：一位波兰人眼中的当今世界

I am a Pole. My country borders Europe’s largest war since 1945, heats itself with coal and imported gas, and arms itself on borrowed money. From here the news does not arrive as separate stories. Every generation believes it is living through the end of something. What is different in 2026 is that the crises have stopped arriving one at a time. A war in the Gulf becomes the price of my diesel, smaller harvests from Sudan to Yemen and a half-empty gas cavern in Bavaria. 我是一名波兰人。我的国家与自1945年以来欧洲最大规模的战争接壤，依靠煤炭和进口天然气取暖，并靠借贷来武装自己。从这里看，新闻不再是孤立的事件。每一代人都认为自己正经历着某个时代的终结。2026年的不同之处在于，危机不再是一个接一个地到来。海湾地区的一场战争，直接变成了我所使用的柴油价格，变成了从苏丹到也门的减产，以及巴伐利亚州半空的天然气储气库。

The world is not ending. But for thirty years we swapped buffers for dependencies, because a supplier is cheaper than a stockpile and a guarantee is cheaper than an army. When a dependency failed, we did not rebuild the buffer. We found another dependency. Every swap worked for as long as the thing at the other end was there. This year, several of those things were tested together. 世界并没有终结。但在过去的三十年里，我们用“依赖”取代了“缓冲”，因为寻找供应商比建立库存更便宜，寻求安全保障比维持军队更省钱。当某种依赖关系失效时，我们并没有重建缓冲机制，而是寻找了另一种依赖。每一次置换在另一端依然存在时都能奏效。而今年，其中几项依赖同时受到了考验。

One strait, three crises

一个海峡，三重危机

Start about 4,000 kilometres south-east of Warsaw. US and Israeli military operations against Iran began in late February. Since March, Iran has kept the Strait of Hormuz closed with drones, missiles, mines and small boats. Tanker traffic through it has fallen by more than 90 percent. The International Energy Agency calls it the largest supply disruption the oil market has ever seen. What follows is that closure travelling in three directions at once: into fuel, into food and into this winter’s heating. 从华沙东南约4000公里处开始看起。美国和以色列针对伊朗的军事行动始于2月底。自3月以来，伊朗利用无人机、导弹、水雷和小型快艇封锁了霍尔木兹海峡。通过该海峡的油轮运输量下降了超过90%。国际能源署称这是石油市场有史以来最大的供应中断。随之而来的是这种封锁向三个方向同时蔓延：燃油、粮食以及这个冬天的取暖。

A ceasefire that did not hold

一份未能维持的停火协议

A fragile ceasefire pulled prices back to pre-war levels in early summer, then broke down. By early September Brent crude was near $97 a barrel, up 19 percent in a month, by mid-month it was around $105, and on 24 September it touched $108. On 22 September Iran handed Washington a written road map: a regional ceasefire of up to 60 days, a phased reopening of the strait and an end to the American naval blockade. Washington rejected it, and by one report the president expects to resume bombing after the November midterm elections. The detour around the Gulf runs through the Red Sea’s own chokepoint, the Bab al-Mandab, where Houthi forces seized a key Yemeni port this month. 初夏时，一份脆弱的停火协议曾将油价拉回战前水平，但随后协议破裂。到9月初，布伦特原油价格接近每桶97美元，单月上涨19%；到月中时约为105美元，9月24日更是触及108美元。9月22日，伊朗向华盛顿提交了一份书面路线图：实现长达60天的地区停火、分阶段重新开放海峡并结束美国的海军封锁。华盛顿拒绝了该提议，据报道，总统预计将在11月中期选举后恢复轰炸。绕过海湾地区的航线必须经过红海的咽喉要道——曼德海峡，而胡塞武装本月已占领了该地区一个关键的也门港口。

Somebody is getting rich

有人正在发财

A chart doing the rounds on investing forums this month shows a tanker-shipping fund going parabolic. It is real. The Breakwave Tanker Shipping ETF, which tracks the cost of hiring a crude tanker, rose more than 600 percent in the first two months of the war and was up more than 2,300 percent for the year by early September. Day rates for some supertankers went from under $100,000 before the war to a record of about $860,000 on 10 September. The fund is tiny, and its own manager says rates will fall if the strait reopens. But the same closure that empties a granary fills somebody’s brokerage account. 本月在投资论坛上流传的一张图表显示，一只油轮航运基金的走势呈抛物线式上涨。这是真实的。追踪原油油轮租赁成本的Breakwave油轮航运ETF在战争头两个月上涨了超过600%，到9月初，该基金年内涨幅已超过2300%。一些超级油轮的日租金从战前的不到10万美元，飙升至9月10日约86万美元的创纪录水平。该基金规模很小，其经理也表示如果海峡重新开放，费率将会下跌。但正是这种导致粮仓空虚的封锁，填满了某些人的经纪账户。

The war next door is burning the same fuel

邻近的战争消耗着同样的燃料

Ukrainian drones have hit Russian refineries at least 70 times this year, roughly once every four days by the IEA’s count, pushing Russia’s refining output to a two-decade low. Half of its six biggest diesel plants cut or halted output this month, and Moscow has restricted fuel exports. US diesel passed $6 a gallon for the first time on 10 September. The American president has phoned Kyiv to ask it to stop hitting diesel targets. 今年，乌克兰无人机至少70次袭击了俄罗斯炼油厂，据国际能源署统计，大约每四天一次，这使得俄罗斯的炼油产量降至二十年来的最低点。本月，俄罗斯六大柴油厂中有一半削减或停止了生产，莫斯科方面也限制了燃料出口。9月10日，美国柴油价格首次突破每加仑6美元。美国总统已致电基辅，要求其停止攻击柴油相关目标。

France: a run on the pumps

法国：加油站的抢购潮

A viral post in mid-September declared that France was running out of fuel. The official data is less dramatic and more instructive. On 20 September, 15 percent of stations had run out of petrol or diesel, up from 11 percent two days earlier. In Grand Est it was 20 percent. The government rules out a shortage. About nine in ten of the dry stations belong to TotalEnergies, which caps petrol at €1.99 a litre, and drivers fleeing record prices elsewhere emptied its tanks faster than trucks could refill them. The official count also understates the gaps: a station is listed only when it is out of every petrol grade or out of diesel. A price cap meant as a cushion, in a system with no slack, turned a price shock into empty pumps. 9月中旬的一篇病毒式传播的帖子声称法国燃料即将耗尽。官方数据虽然没那么戏剧化，但更具启发性。9月20日，15%的加油站汽油或柴油售罄，而两天前这一比例为11%。在大东部大区，这一比例高达20%。政府排除了短缺的可能性。约九成的缺油加油站属于道达尔能源公司（TotalEnergies），该公司将汽油价格上限设定为每升1.99欧元，由于其他地方价格创下纪录，司机们纷纷涌向这里，导致其储油罐被清空的速度超过了油罐车的补给速度。官方统计数据也低估了缺口：只有当一个加油站的所有标号汽油或柴油全部售罄时，才会被列入统计。在一个缺乏缓冲的系统中，旨在作为缓冲的价格上限，反而将价格冲击演变成了加油站的“油荒”。

Diesel moves food, and Hormuz moves what grows it

柴油运输粮食，而霍尔木兹海峡运输粮食的生产资料

The strait normally carries up to 30 percent of internationally traded fertiliser. The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) warns that scarcity will cut yields and tighten food supplies through late 2026 and into 2027. The damage is delayed. Fertiliser that arrives late cannot recover lost yield, and because people keep eating grain planted before the disruption, the system looks fine until the smaller harvests come in. 该海峡通常承担着全球高达30%的化肥贸易运输。联合国粮农组织（FAO）警告称，短缺将导致产量下降，并使2026年下半年至2027年的粮食供应趋紧。这种损害具有滞后性。迟到的化肥无法挽回损失的产量，而且由于人们仍在消耗中断前种植的粮食，在减产收获到来之前，系统看起来一切正常。

The baseline was already grim

基准线本已严峻

2025 was the first year in the history of the Global Report on Food Crises with two confirmed famines, in Gaza and Sudan. Funding for food assistance fell an estimated 59 percent between 2022 and 2025. The World Food Programme estimates that sustained high oil prices could push up to 45 million more people into acute food insecurity. 2025年是《全球粮食危机报告》历史上首次确认出现两场饥荒的一年，分别发生在加沙和苏丹。2022年至2025年间，粮食援助资金估计减少了59%。世界粮食计划署估计，持续的高油价可能导致多达4500万人陷入严重的粮食不安全境地。

The harvest at home

本地的收成

Europe’s potato belt tells the story in a single season. Last year there was a glut across the continent; in Poland alone growers lifted about 7 million tonnes, 18 percent more than the year before, and by spring farmers were selling below cost. So growers in Belgium, France, the Netherlands and Germany planted 14 percent less. Then came five heatwaves and a drought. Their growers’ organisation now expects a harvest down 25 percent, one of the smallest in a decade, and in Belgium the price of potatoes for processing went from €10 to €150 a tonne within days. Grain is dearer too. Milling wheat on the Paris exchange has gone from €191 a tonne in January to about €245, a rise of 28 percent, and maize is up 36 percent. At Polish purchase points wheat has gone from 778 zloty a tonne to about 900, and maize from 748 to over 930. Back in May, traders were already pointing to frost and drought here, drought in France and America, and record energy prices. 欧洲的马铃薯产区在一个季节内就说明了问题。去年整个欧洲大陆供过于求；仅在波兰，种植者就收获了约700万吨，比前一年增长了18%，到了春天，农民们的售价甚至低于成本。因此，比利时、法国、荷兰和德国的种植者减少了14%的种植面积。随后，五次热浪和一场干旱接踵而至。种植者协会目前预计收成将下降25%，为十年来最低水平之一；在比利时，加工用马铃薯的价格在几天内从每吨10欧元飙升至150欧元。谷物也变得更贵了。巴黎交易所的制粉小麦价格从1月份的每吨191欧元涨至约245欧元，涨幅为28%，玉米价格上涨了36%。在波兰的收购点，小麦价格从每吨778兹罗提涨至约900兹罗提，玉米从748兹罗提涨至超过930兹罗提。早在5月份，交易商就已经指出了这里的霜冻和干旱、法国和美国的干旱，以及创纪录的能源价格。