WELCOME TO MATT RIDLEY'S BLOG

Block chains work – and could be transformational My recent (4 December 2017) Times column on bitcoin, block chain and distributed ledgers:   The price of a Bitcoin has risen tenfold in ten months. Yet whether and when the bubble will burst is beside the point, which is that Bitcoin works. What I mean by […]

The letter Theresa May should send with the cheque… My Times column on Britain’s “financial settlement” with the European Union: Theresa May reportedly plans to offer about £40 billion of our money in order to bring the European Union to the table to discuss whether it wishes to trade freely with Britain after we leave […]

Biotech is urgently needed, economically and environmentally, in Africa My Times column on the urgent need for biotechnology in African agriculture: An even more dangerous foe than Robert Mugabe is stalking Africa. Early last year, a moth caterpillar called the fall armyworm, a native of the Americas, turned up in Nigeria. It has quickly spread […]

Local action improves the environment, not more officials My Times column on environmental policy:   Michael Gove, the environment secretary, is right to promise higher, not lower, environmental standards once we leave the European Union. Britain has always been a pioneer of environmental policy, and indeed many of our protections pre-date our joining the EU. […]

A lawsuit reveals a bitter split over renewable energy My Reaction article on the disputes within the green movement:   You can always tell when there is a United Nations Climate Conference of the Parties (COP) coming up, because there are any number of carefully timed press releases about how hot it has been or […]

We overestimate the impact of innovation in the short term but… My Times column on Amara’s Law:   Alongside a great many foolish things that have been said about the future, only one really clever thing stands out. It was a “law” coined by a Stanford University computer scientist and long-time head of the Institute […]

Too many people favour immigration but resist development My Times column on demography, immigration and the building of houses, roads and runways:   The Office for National Statistics says it expects Britain’s population to grow slightly more slowly than it thought three years ago, partly because of lower immigration after Brexit and partly because of […]

Bounty hunting lawyers lie behind a distortion of science My Times column on the scientific and legal scandal behind the attempt to ban a weedkiller.   Bad news is always more newsworthy than good. The widely reported finding that insect abundance is down by 75 per cent in Germany over 27 years was big news, while, […]

New technology may allow regulation by effort rather than quotas My recent Times column on Britain’s opportunity for fisheries reform post Brexit:   A richly abundant sea fish population is one of the great wonders of the world that my generation has rarely seen. Last week I was lucky enough to be aboard a boat […]

Politics is increasingly about motives, not results My Times column on how intentions are taken to matter more than what works:   The curse of modern politics is an epidemic of good intentions and bad outcomes. Policy after policy is chosen and voted on according to whether it means well, not whether it works. And […]