Alex, what are your thoughts?

You know, you've heard me talk a lot about pain points.

So I think we really have to sit back and listen to pain points.

One thing I'll do is I'll just put a question box up in like my stories on Instagram and just ask people what they're struggling with.

And I use that as my content to then incorporate, like, how can I get whole grains in there? How can I get more fiber into their challenges they're actually having and show those examples? And how can I make it savable? How can I make it shareable? How can I create engagement so then all of those things, then help it reach more people.

We are competing on social media with all of the fear mongering, the extreme forms of communication that people are putting out there that aren't necessarily credentialed to share the information.

So it's so important to do that.

Yes.

Are you seeing rumblings of that at the moment, or are people still in sort of wait and see mode?

Uh, no. There's definitely been a notable pickup in certain areas where there was already a bit of momentum.

So in Japan, they have been undertaking a number of nuclear restarts.

They've been... were moving very tentatively, uh, as the public got behind nuclear and the politics became less challenging.

Uh, that, that is all apparently accelerating now.

So Japan will push very hard on nuclear restarts, and more importantly, the public polling is really strong for it, so there's not a lot of political risk.

And of course, Takeuchi had a massive election win, so she's in favor of it, the public's behind it, and there's a matter of necessity now.

Um, setting coal aside for a second, when you look at alternate sources of energy, do you have, like, I don't want to say a personal favorite, but which one [laughs] which one of them do you think comes out on top in the sort of medium to longer term from this particular situation?

Are you seeing rumblings of that at the moment, or are people still in sort of wait and see mode?

Uh, no, there's definitely been a notable pickup in certain areas where there was already a bit of momentum.

So in Japan, they have been undertakingA number of nuclear restarts that have been, were moving very tentatively, uh, as the public got behind nuclear and the politics became less challenging.

Uh, that, that is all apparently accelerating now.

So Japan will push very hard on nuclear restarts, and more importantly, the public polling is really strong for it, so there's not a lot of political risk.

And of course, Takeuchi had a massive election win, so she's in favor of it, the public's behind it, and there's a matter of necessity now.

So I think that's something one could assume is only gonna move faster.

Um, setting coal aside for a second, when you look at alternate sources of energy, do you have, like, I don't want to say a personal favorite, but which one [chuckles] which one of them do you think comes out on top in the sort of medium to longer term from this particular situation?

So before we continue to tell the story of how this war could accelerate the shift toward renewables, can we just talk a little bit about the possibility that this war has revealed an enormous vulnerability of the global fossil fuel market?

Certainly.

I think the underlying assumption of what made fossil fuels work was that they were the cheapest thing going for the longest time, and you could assume away the security in the open ocean, uh, either by dint of the US Navy or by dint of there was no such thing as drones, and they couldn't travel five hundred miles readily and, and hit a ship at that distance, and they didn't cost, you know, uh, like a, the price of a mid-sized car.

Uh, all those assumptions are wrong now.

And so one thing that I think we've underappreciated is how seeing what has happened in the Ukraine war with Ukraine, a mid-sized power, uh, under assault being able to hit Russian tankers all over the place, that, that capacity can be developed by America's enemies, by non-state actors, by other threats, and this should change how one considers the overall, uh, price versus risk calculus of fossil supply everywhere.

If you move a, a ve- a very large crude carrier, you assume the insurance is cheap, that it's gonna turn up on time, and that it can be unmolested in the open ocean.

And now the problem we have is that you are under threat through certain bodies of water due to current geopolitical conflicts.

What do you think are the most important ways in which the rise of drone warfare, which is clearly a major feature of this war, is gonna change not just, you know, global fossil fuel markets, but the global economy and geopolitics in the future?