Welcome to Matt Ridley's Blog

Update: I'd like to add one thing to the story below. Stewart Brand, who I know and admire, played a prominent part in the Channel 4 film. He's not a `convert' to these views. He has always been strongly pro-GM food and mildly pro-nuclear. So my comments here were not aimed at him.

Last night saw a TV programme in the UK called What the Green Movement Got Wrong, in which various greens admitted that they had done terrible harm by opposing nuclear power and GM food and indoor DDT. It was a pretty good programme, especially on Chernobyl.

Here is Sunday'sNew York Times variety puzzlewhose solution was a nice surprise for me (hat tip Steve Budiansky).

Here's the text of an opinion piece I wrote, which was published in the Western Daily Press (link to home page, not article itself) this morning to publicise a talk I am giving in Wells Cathedral on Tuesday 14th. Come along if you live nearby for the peculiar sight of me speaking in a church. Will I get to use the pulpit?

``If you write a book saying the world is getting better, you might get away with being thought eccentric. But if you write a book saying that the world is going to go on getting better and that in 2100 people will be healthier, wealthier and wiser -- and have more rainforests too - you will be though stark, raving bonkers. It is just not sane to believe in a happy future for people and their planet.

Yet I cannot stop myself. I've looked at all the statistics, facts, anecdotes, predictions and pronouncements I can get hold of and they all seem to me to suggest that we will be better off in 2100 than we are now. Much better off.