The cost of climate change policies: over £300 billion
Matt Ridley
The cost of renewable subsidies has been deliberately understated My Times column on the high cost of Britain’s climate change policies: We now know from three different sources that Britain’s climate and energy policy is not just too expensive but has also been dishonestly presented. Peter Lilley MP, an unusually numerate former cabinet minister, has […]
Free movement of genius was crucial to Europe’s prosperity
Matt Ridley
Unification prevents experimentation and talent moving across borders My column on European fragmentation in the Times (5 December): The Italian referendum and close-shave Austrian election are symptoms of a continent that may be teetering on the brink of political disintegration. It’s just possible that an empire may be collapsing before our eyes, as the […]
Why is the left reviving apartheid?
Matt Ridley
Identity politics is taking us backwards to division and prejudice My Times column on identity politics: The student union at King’s College London will field a team in University Challenge that contains at least 50 per cent “self-defining women, trans or non-binary students”. The only bad thing Ken Livingstone could bring himself to say about […]
Artificial Intelligence is not going to cause mass unemployment
Matt Ridley
It will be no different from the automation of farms or factories My Times column on the overdone threat from robots: The tech industry, headquartered in Silicon Valley, is populated largely by enthusiastic optimists, who want to change the world and think they can. But there is one strand of pessimism that you hear […]
People took Trump seriously, but not literally — the media vice-versa
Matt Ridley
Ten reasons campaign rhetoric will not be the same as reality My Times column on Trump’s electoral triumph (originally published 14 November): Years of compensating for the media’s tendency to look on the dark side of everything has taught me that it generally pays to seek silver linings. It’s possible of course that Donald Trump […]
Matt Ridley
Why collective guesses outperform experts in certain decisions My Times column on the wisdom of crowds, published the day before election day in the US: ‘In these democratic days, any investigation into the trustworthiness and peculiarities of popular judgments is of interest.” So begins an article entitled Vox Populi, which is not about Donald Trump […]
Poverty, not wealth, is the greater threat to wildlife
Matt Ridley
Why wolves are increasing, lions decreasing and tigers holding steady? My Times column on the surprising correlation between prosperity and improving conservation outcomes: As foxes move into cities and deer, badgers and otters grow ever-more numerous, along with birds such as ospreys, buzzards and red kites, you might be thinking much of Britain’s wildlife is […]
Batteries won’t make renewables into reliables
Matt Ridley
The scale and cost of battery storage for grid power would be huge My Times column on batteries: Batteries are no longer boring. Whether catching fire in Samsung Note 7s, being hailed as the answer to future electricity grids thanks to breakthrough chemical innovation, or being manufactured on a gigantic scale in Elon Musk’s […]
Brexit should mean opening the doors to foreign scientists
Matt Ridley
Polls show the public welcomes skilled migrants such as scientists My recent Times column from 10 October on immigration and the European Union: Michael Kosterlitz, one of the four British-born but American-resident winners of Nobel prizes in science this year, is so incensed by Brexit that he is considering renouncing his British citizenship: “The idea […]
Britain’s broken land-use planning system
Matt Ridley
Protesters, lawyers and public servants make money from delay My recent Times column on the planning paralysis holding back Britain: At last, the government is about to decide on a third runway at Heathrow airport — by the end of this month, I hear. It’s only been ten years since Tony Blair’s government first proposed […]
