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Good for the environment, after all
Matt Ridley
After 13 years, everybody sensible now knows the GM crops were good for human beings and the environment too. But admitting it is hard. The Scientific Alliance newsletter has an interesting update on GM food. The public no longer feels the visceral fear of these crops that they did 13 years ago, even in Europe. But […]
Matt Ridley
Two environmental trends headed in a good direction Update: I failed to make clear that negative numbers in the drought severity index implies worse droughts. The two findings below contradict each other. Here is another “greening”, of the Sahel: On the day that a famine is declared in Africa — thanks as much […]
Matt Ridley
A fetish with carbon is driving up the price of electricity and destroying jobs Here’s (belatedly) a piece I published in the Times last week. British Gas is putting up the cost of heating and lighting the average home by up to 18 per cent, or about £200 a year. Indignation at its profiteering is […]
Matt Ridley
3D printing may one day work for stem-cell-derived kidneys and concrete building parts My l atest Mind and Matter column in the Wall Street Journal is on 3D printing: Serendipity works in curious ways. Earlier this month, on the day before I read news of the successful implanting of a synthetic windpipe grown with a […]
A debate on labels and acidification
Matt Ridley
Mark Lynas engages me on several issues Mark Lynas’s new book The God Species contains a few pages that dispute my account of ocean acidification in particular. Mark kindly alerted me to this and asked for my reaction. The result was an exchange, which Mark has put up on his blog here, which I mirror here. I […]
Matt Ridley
Brian Eno, the musician and writer, is more positive as a result of reading The Rational Optimist: “That kind of marks the change I’ve felt in the past year or two. I wouldn’t end an album like that now,” he says. Drums Between the Bells has a loose, funky feel; it ends with the words, “Everything […]
Matt Ridley
My latest Mind and Matter column for the Wall Street Journal is on the strange phenomenon of contagious cancer in dogs and Tasmanian devils, and whether it could happen to us. Elizabeth Murchison is speaking about this at the TED Global meeting in Edinburgh next week. The human body is a teeming city of […]
Samuel Johnson prize shortlist
Matt Ridley
The film of the book Frank Dikotter’s fine — and vital — book on Mao’s Great famine won the Samuel Johnson prize. But you can see a short film and a discussion about my book on the BBC Culture show here (from minute 17.17 onwards). It’s an honour to have made it to the shortlist.
Matt Ridley
Nic Lewis’s discovery of a statistical alteration applied by the IPCC lends strong support to lukwarming Nic Lewis’s discovery of a statistical alteration applied by the IPCC lends strong support to lukwarming As most people know, I am a lukewarmer — somebody who accepts carbon dioxide’s full greenhouse potential, but does not accept the […]
Eating your greenery — and having it too
Matt Ridley
My latest Mind and Matter column in the Wall Street Journal: Driving home the other day it occurred to me that almost none of the greenery I could see-trees, garden shrubs, grass shoulders on the highway-was going to be used by humans for food, fuel, clothing or shelter. That would not have been true 500 years […]
