As oft repeated, in order for severe ideologues to retain their insufferably bad policy they must pretend not to know things. However, in the case of food shortages, the pretending about the origin of the problem has severe consequences.
Vladimir Putin’s military action against eastern Ukraine had nothing to do with the severe food shortages and inflation in Sri Lanka {link}. Nor does Putin have any influence over the Dutch government trying to stop food production {link}. Additionally, Putin has no control over Justin Trudeau’s decision to limit harvest yields by blocking the use of nitrogen-based fertilizer {link}. More importantly, it was not Vladimir Putin who forced all the western politicians to sign up for a new ‘climate friendly’ energy program that is destroying the ability of western farms to generate higher yield crops.
You do not need to be a farmer to understand that nitrogen/phosphorus-based industrial fertilizer has been the reason why farm yields have generated massive amounts of food on a global basis. The United States, Canada, the U.K. and places like the Netherlands have massively increased their ability to generate food for export, in large part due to the success of improved fertilizer and crop saving modern pesticides. Take those farming advancements away under the guise of climate change and you get a global Sri Lanka.
Those western climate and energy policies create downstream consequences. The decision to chase a new global energy policy under the name “Build Back Better,” in combination with short-sighted EU sanctions against Russia, and you get food shortages. And boy howdy are they trying to avoid taking responsibility for it.
It was not Vladimir Putin who told British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz their proactive recommendation to switch from crop-based biofuels to human food would be blocked. That G7 decision was made by Justin Trudeau and Joe Biden. {link} Even more significantly, it was not Russia who threatened the multinational energy companies about investing in Africa for expanded natural gas supplies for their fertilizer needs. That threat came from the same western government alliance, per their instructions from the World Economic Forum group {link}.
Keep in mind, when writing the majority decision Justice Clarence Thomas concluded there was no historical requirement that law-abiding citizens show the kind of special need for self-defense required by the New York law to carry a gun in public. Indeed, as Thomas wrote, there is “no other constitutional right that an individual may exercise only after demonstrating to government officers some special need.”