The Paris climate treaty is weak, so why do climate activists defend it?
Matt Ridley
How a climate change treaty was mis-sold to the green movement My Times column on the Paris climate deal: President Trump will decide shortly whether to pull the US out of the Paris agreement on climate change. By all accounts, his instincts and his campaign promises encourage him to do so while his daughter Ivanka […]
Britain should adopt the Innovation Principle
Matt Ridley
We must test legislation against whether it impedes innovation Here’s my recent Times column: An open letter to George Freeman MP, chairman of the government’s policy board. Dear George, as a former biotech venture capitalist, you are a passionate champion of innovation. It has pulled an average of 137,000 people out of extreme poverty each […]
Matt Ridley
Will we find a way to replace meat eating before it becomes unpopular? My Times column on meat eating: A few years ago I had a conversation at Harvard with Steven Pinker, the bestselling evolutionary psychologist. We were both writing optimistic books at the time, his being The Better Angels of Our Nature, about the […]
European Commission buries science on bees
Matt Ridley
Study suggests ban on neonicotinoids has done more harm than good My Times column on a shocking case of European policy cover-up over bees and insecticides: Is the European Commission determined to dim the Enlightenment? I ask this because its behaviour in one specific instance goes so utterly with dogma and against evidence as […]
Faddy fashions in foods conceal a real nutritional problem
Matt Ridley
Food allergies are increasing – because we’ve got rid of our worms My Times column on dietary intolerance: I suggest you finish your breakfast before reading this column. When the National Health Service announced last month that it would no longer prescribe gluten-free food, it surprised me that it had been doing so in […]
When populism falters and the elite strikes back
Matt Ridley
Lessons from the history of failed rebellions against oligarchs My Times column on Douglas Carswell’s book Rebel: I am writing this from the Netherlands, where one of the most gruesome paintings in the Rijksmuseum, by Jan de Baen, depicts the eviscerated bodies of the de Witt brothers, hanging upside down after the mob had […]
Stand up for the right to criticise Islam
Matt Ridley
We risk gradually having an offence of blasphemy imposed on the west “It is wrong to describe this as Islamic terrorism. It is Islamist terrorism. It is a perversion of a great faith.” This is what the prime minister said in parliament after the attack on Westminster Bridge that killed three tourists and a policeman. […]
Matt Ridley
Britain once destroyed India’s economy yet we can still be friends My Times column on Britain and India: By 2022, India will have overtaken China to become the most populous country in the world and, growing fast, will be rapidly returning towards the dominant position it held in the world economy for centuries. It […]
Free trade agreements are easier if you keep them simple
Matt Ridley
Australia offers an example for post-Brexit Britain An expanded and updated version of my Times column on free trade agreements and Brexit: The prime minister will soon press the button and launch Article 50 on its inexorable, ballistic trajectory towards impact in March 2019. From the political class here, let alone in Brussels, comes […]
Matt Ridley
The various ways our statistical reasoning lets us down My Times column on the frequent statistical reasoning mistakes that lead to bad policies: Budget week might be a good time to remind ourselves of the fallacies on which bad policies feed. Last year the University of Michigan’s Professor Richard Nisbett wrote a short book called […]
