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It’s about slowing water in the uplands and speeding it in the lowlands My Times column on the winter floods in Britain:   My invitation to serve on the government’s flood defence review seems to have got stuck in the Christmas post. So here’s a memo, based on Northumberland gossip as well as published papers, for how […]

Our favourite landscapes echo our past habitat My Times column on the Capability Brown tercentenary: Next year marks the 300th birthday of Lancelot Brown at Kirkharle, in Northumberland, the man who saw “capability” in every landscape and indefatigably transformed England. In his 280 commissions, Capability Brown stamped his mark on some 120,000 acres, tearing out […]

A classic case of meso-predator release hurting another species My Times column on the hedgehog decline, and the effect of badgers: Hedgehogs, subjects of the Times Christmas Appeal, are to get their own summit, the Environment Secretary Liz Truss said last week. Hedgehogs really are in trouble. Their numbers have plunged, their range has shrunk […]

Treating evolution as a prescription not a description has been cruel My article on the misuse of Malthus appeared in Standpoint magazine. It is an edited extract from my book, The Evolution of Everything. It is worth asking how John Gray could have reviewed that book and accused me of social Darwinism after reading this! […]

Why multilateral negotiation is so difficult My Times column on the underwhelming results of the climate conference and Britain’s renegotiation with the European Union:   There’s an uncanny similarity between the climate negotiations that climaxed in Paris at the weekend and David Cameron’s European Union reform negotiations, which continue in Brussels this week. The original […]

Mark Zuckerberg’s generosity is welcome My Times column on the Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative: Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan marked the birth of their daughter Max by promising to donate 99 per cent of their Facebook shares during their lifetimes to support good causes. For this they were pilloried by some. The economist Thomas Piketty […]

Why climate policies are doing more harm than climate change I have written five articles on climate change science and policy in the past week, for Scientific American, The Times (twice), the Wall Street Journal and the Spectator. They follow here in the form of a lengthy essay. Sentences in square brackets have been added […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]