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Welcome to Matt Ridley's Blog

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Matt Ridley is the author of provocative books on evolution, genetics and society. His books have sold over a million copies, been translated into thirty languages, and have won several awards.

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Matt Ridley's latest book Viral: The Search for the Origin of Covid-19, co-authored with scientist Alina Chan from Harvard and MIT's Broad Institute, is now available in the United States, in the United Kingdom, and elsewhere.

    Archive for date: March, 2022

  • The madness of our worship of wind

    Published on: Sunday, 27 March, 2022

    They despoil our glorious countryside, add £6 billion a year to our household bills and are arguably the most inefficient solution to our energy crisis. So why is the Government planning to make it even easier to build them?

    My article for The Daily Mail:

    Take a wild guess at how much of the UK’s total primary demand for energy was supplied by wind power in 2020.

    Half? 30 per cent? No, in fact, it was less than 4 per cent.

    Read Full Post
    By: Matt Ridley | Tagged: daily-mail, energy, environment
  • As Shanghai locks down, China is facing its greatest Covid crisis yet

    Published on: Saturday, 26 March, 2022

    My article for Spectator:

    The coronavirus is spreading through Hong Kong, Shenzhen and other cities in China like a bush fire; tens of millions of Chinese have been ordered to stay at home yet again. Shanghai, a city of 26 million souls, has been split in two. Those on the eastern side of the Huangpu River will be locked down until Friday, their west bank neighbours from the start of April.

    It won’t work. Like a new Mercedes, the BA.2 model of the omicron variant of the Sars-CoV-2 virus is faster, quieter and 30 per cent more prolific. There is no chance of stopping it with lockdowns, mass testing or social distancing – even in Xi Jinping’s China.

    Read Full Post
    By: Matt Ridley | Tagged: spectator, coronavirus, china
  • How Putin spent millions spreading fake news about fracking

    Published on: Tuesday, 15 March, 2022

    My article for The Sun:

    When Lorraine Allanson spoke up in favour of drilling for shale gas in her part of North Yorkshire, activists cut off her internet, called her a “whore” and linked her to a fake crime number. “Shouting, abuse, public defecation, intimidation, hijacking lorries to stop deliveries, blocking the village street, this was the locals’ daily experience,” she wrote in her book My Story.

    The wave of noisy protests against shale gas in Lancashire and Yorkshire in recent years looked like a grassroots movement. It was anything but.

    Read Full Post
    By: Matt Ridley | Tagged: the-sun, energy, environment, fracking, uk-politics, russia
  • Plains of plenty

    Published on: Thursday, 10 March, 2022

    The Masai Mara has defied gloomy predictions of decline

    My article for The Critic:

    When I was ten years old, in 1968, my parents took me and two of my sisters on a safari through Kenya and Tanzania. Having lived there when they first married in the 1950s, they wanted us to see the wildlife before it was all gone. Newly independent Kenya, its population booming, would soon have few lions or elephants left. This was not intended as a political criticism, it was just that there was unlikely to be room for such luxuries in a poor nation striving to feed its expanding population.

    The first of the game reserves we visited, the Masai Mara, with its abundant big game and beautiful birds, left an indelible impression on my young mind. It helped turn me into a bird watcher and then a biologist. This winter, 53 years later, I returned to the Mara for the first time. To say that my parents’ pessimism was unjustified is to understate the matter — vastly. The grassy plains either side of the Mara river are as rich as ever in zebra, topi, eland, wildebeest, waterbuck, gazelles, impala, giraffe and buffalo.

    Read Full Post
    By: Matt Ridley | Tagged: the-critic, environment
  • The UK is sitting on a gas gold mine, while Putin has Europe’s energy market by the throat

    Published on: Thursday, 03 March, 2022

    It’s madness not to frack

    My article for The Sun:

    The price of gas is through the roof thanks to Vladimir Putin, who has Europe’s energy market by the throat. Britain is on track to spend a staggering £2BILLION on imported liquefied natural gas from Russia this year as war rages in Ukraine.

    Household bills will skyrocket even more than they already were — and could hit £3,000 a year. This is what happens when you rely on imported foreign energy. And what makes it more maddening is that we don’t need to do this. We have supplies here.

    Read Full Post
    By: Matt Ridley | Tagged: the-sun, energy, environment, uk-politics
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