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Ebola needs beds on the ground
Matt Ridley
Public health measures have to work soon, or a major pandemic looms My Times column on Ebola: It is not often I find myself agreeing with apocalyptic warnings, but the west African ebola epidemic deserves hyperbole right now. Anthony Banbury, head of the UN ebola emergency response mission, says: “Time is our enemy. The […]
Matt Ridley
A precautionary ban has made things worse for bees My Times column on how banning neo-nicotinoid pesticides is proving counter-productive for bees: The European Union’s addiction to the precautionary principle — which says in effect that the risks of new technologies must be measured against perfection, not against the risks of existing technologies — […]
Bitcoin and block-chain could transform the world
Matt Ridley
The origins and implications of the technology behind bitcoin My Times column on who started bitcoin and what it means: Amid the hurly-burly of war, disease and politics, you might be forgiven for not paying much attention to bitcoin, the electronic form of money favoured by radical libertarians and drug dealers. Yet it is possible […]
Matt Ridley
Review of Steven Johnson’s book on innovation My review of Steven Johnson’s book How We Got To Now appeared in the Times: The meteorologist Edward Lorenz famously asked, in the title of a lecture in 1972: “does the flap of a butterfly’s wings in Brazil set off a tornado in Texas?”, and the phrase […]
Matt Ridley
Loyalties are to nation and county, rather than region and continent My Times column on English devolution following the Scottish independence referendum: As part of the 1 per cent of England’s population that lives north of Hadrian’s Wall, I have found the past few weeks more than usually intriguing. It was fascinating to find […]
The ozone hole was exaggerated as a problem
Matt Ridley
Serial hyperbole does the environmental movement no favours My recent Times column argued that the alleged healing of the ozone layer is exaggerated, but so was the impact of the ozone hole over Antarctica: The ozone layer is healing. Or so said the news last week. Thanks to a treaty signed in Montreal in 1989 […]
Whatever happened to global warming?
Matt Ridley
The explanations for the “pause” only make it less threatening in future My op-ed in the Wall Street Journal addresses the latest explanations for the “pause” in global warming and their implications. I have responded to an ill-informed critique of the article below. On Sept. 23 the United Nations will host a party for […]
Government begins as a monopoly on violence
Matt Ridley
It’s an official protection racket My Times column last week was on the historical roots of government: Nobody seems to agree whether Islamic State is best described as a gang of criminals, a terrorist organisation or a religious movement. It clearly has a bit of all three. But don’t forget that it aspires, for […]
Matt Ridley
It’s worked elsewhere My recent Times column was on the stagnation of European economic growth rates: The financial crisis was supposed to have discredited the “Anglo-Saxon” model of economic management as surely as the fall of the Berlin wall discredited communism. Yet last week’s numbers on economic growth show emphatically the opposite. The British economy is […]
Matt Ridley
In a time of widespread violence and disease, good news is no news The Times carried my article arguing that things are still going well for the world as a whole even in a month of war, terror and disease. I have illustrated it with two superb charts from ourworldindata.org, a website being developed by […]
