Matt Ridley
Non-belief is the fastest growing category of belief; Islamists are worried My Times column on the rise of non-belief: Fifty years ago, after the cracking of the genetic code, Francis Crick was so confident religion would fade that he offered a prize for the best future use for Cambridge’s college chapels. Swimming pools, said […]
Wind makes electricity expensive and unreliable without cutting emissions
Matt Ridley
By preventing investment in gas, the dash for wind has done real harm My Times article on wind power is below. An astonishingly poor attack on the article was made in The Guardian by Mark Lynas. He failed to address all the main points I made: he failed to challenge the argument that wind power […]
Humanity’s best days lie ahead
Matt Ridley
Munk Debate, Toronto, 6 November 2105 I took part in a Munk debate on 6 November, in which Steven Pinker and I argued that “humanity’s best days lie ahead” while Malcolm Gladwell and Alain de Botton argued against us. It was entertaining and we shifted the audience our way a little, although three-quarters were on […]
The western environmental movement’s role in China’s one-child policy
Matt Ridley
The policy’s father, Song Jian, got the idea directly from Malthusians My Times column on the western origin of the one-child policy: The abolition of China’s one-child policy brings to an end one of the most futile and inhumane experiments in top-down social engineering the world has seen. I say futile because it did […]
How technological innovation happens
Matt Ridley
It’s incremental and evolutionary, and it’s often the mother of science The Wall Street Journal carried an extract from my new book The Evolution of Everything. The article caused a lot of interest, and was criticised by some as being anti-science. Nothing could be further from the truth and most of those making this case are not quoting […]
The House of Lords challenges the House of Commons
Matt Ridley
As I predicted after the election, the opposition is using the unelected Lords to block legislation My Times column on the constitutional confrontation between the Lords and the Commons: ‘How can you have a constitutional crisis without a constitution?” asked a Dutch friend coming to a meeting in the House of Lords last week. […]
The benefits of carbon dioxide
Matt Ridley
Global greening may save more lives and forests than warming costs My Times Column on the surprisingly large benefits of carbon dioxide emissions: France’s leading television weather forecaster, Philippe Verdier, was taken off air last week for writing that there are “positive consequences” of climate change. Freeman Dyson, professor emeritus of mathematical physics and […]
Some policies to fight climate change have done more harm than good
Matt Ridley
The diesel scandal is the latest own goal for dirigisme This is a longer version of an article I published in the Mail on Sunday: The Volkswagen testing scandal exposes rotten corruption at the core of regulation. Far from ushering in a brave new world of cleaner air, the technologies adopted by European car […]
Perverse regulation will slow the death of smoking
Matt Ridley
The EU’s tobacco product directive hits vaping harder than smoking My Times column on the EU’s idiotic attack on vaping: When regulation goes wrong, people call for more regulation. Sometimes, though, regulation is the cause of the original problem. It is steadily becoming clear that the way the European Union does regulation is especially pernicious. […]
Matt Ridley
Telomerase activation just might lead to cures for ageing itself My Times column on the possibility that old age might itself be cured now we understand telomeres: Squeezed between falling birth rates and better healthcare, the world population is getting rapidly older. Learning how to deal with that is one of the great challenges […]
