Thank you.
I will just start with a very big-picture point of view, and then I'll focus down on some very specific issues.
The first is that we always talk about events; however, most events one has to deal with in the world are events that are repeatedly those of the human experience. I'll give you an example. Recessions, depressions and wars might be unwelcome, but there's a lot of experience in the world in dealing with them, and one knows the outcomes.
Obviously, across the world now we're dealing with events that do transcend past human experience, such as climate change. As you are all conscious, the range of consequences is enormous. We're even dealing with global pandemics and unrelated knock-on issues.
What this means is that when it comes to crises like Ukraine, the effects are greatly amplified because of the unusual times we are in. I'll give you an example. In the 1980s, there were periodic crop failures in the former Soviet Union, yet there wasn't as much of the risk of mass starvation in the world as there is these days. There's a lot more vulnerability in the global system.
We'll take the issue of Russian oil and gas exports. We are in a long energy transition. We know that as oil and gas usage is going up, the portion of it in the energy mix is declining. The last time we were in a long energy transition was the early 20th century, and how it played out was that it fundamentally rearranged the global deck chairs and led to a great deal of insecurity, depression and war. Again, one can see the amplification of effects.
What is particularly concerning today, obviously, is that the Ukrainian war seems to have entered a long period of stalemate, and with political developments potentially in the coming couple of years, which we can potentially anticipate, including south of the border, this does impart a further layer of uncertainty.
To sum up, because of great structural changes in today's world, the effects of crises that obviously would have previously had effects are greatly amplified. The food security implications are much greater than they would have been years ago—