Matt Ridley
  • Home
  • Biography
  • Blog
  • Videos
  • Explore Blagdon
  • Speaking
  • How Innovation Works
    • UK
    • US
    • CA
  • Rational Optimist
  • Books
  • Parliament
  • Contact Me
  • Newsletter
  • Home
  • Biography
  • Blog
  • Videos
  • Explore Blagdon
  • Speaking
  • How Innovation Works
    • UK
    • US
    • CA
  • Rational Optimist
  • Books
  • Parliament
  • Contact Me
  • Newsletter
Blog Archive

Archive

  • 2022

    • June (1)
    • May (1)
    • March (5)
    • February (4)
    • January (3)
  • 2021

    • December (4)
    • November (4)
    • October (3)
    • September (1)
    • August (4)
    • July (6)
    • June (3)
    • May (1)
    • April (2)
    • March (4)
    • February (3)
    • January (2)
  • 2020

    • December (5)
    • November (4)
    • October (4)
    • September (3)
    • July (4)
    • June (6)
    • May (12)
    • April (7)
    • March (10)
    • February (6)
    • January (5)
  • 2019

    • December (4)
    • November (1)
    • October (1)
    • June (1)
    • May (2)
    • April (1)
    • March (2)
    • January (1)
  • 2018

    • December (1)
    • November (1)
    • October (1)
    • August (1)
    • July (2)
    • June (1)
    • May (1)
    • April (4)
    • March (3)
    • February (6)
    • January (4)
  • 2017

    • December (4)
    • November (5)
    • October (5)
    • September (5)
    • August (3)
    • July (5)
    • June (4)
    • May (8)
    • April (4)
    • March (4)
    • February (5)
    • January (4)
  • 2016

    • December (3)
    • November (5)
    • October (8)
    • September (3)
    • August (5)
    • July (6)
    • June (3)
    • May (5)
    • April (8)
    • March (3)
    • February (7)
    • January (3)
  • 2015

    • December (5)
    • November (5)
    • October (7)
    • September (3)
    • August (4)
    • July (5)
    • June (7)
    • May (7)
    • April (7)
    • March (5)
    • February (4)
    • January (7)
  • 2014

    • December (4)
    • November (4)
    • October (5)
    • September (5)
    • August (6)
    • July (6)
    • June (3)
    • May (7)
    • April (7)
    • March (5)
    • February (3)
    • January (5)
  • 2013

    • December (6)
    • November (5)
    • October (7)
    • September (6)
    • August (3)
    • July (7)
    • June (6)
    • May (4)
    • April (4)
    • March (6)
    • February (4)
    • January (6)
  • 2012

    • December (8)
    • November (7)
    • October (5)
    • September (6)
    • August (5)
    • July (6)
    • June (4)
    • May (6)
    • April (4)
    • March (9)
    • February (6)
    • January (8)
  • 2011

    • December (8)
    • November (9)
    • October (18)
    • September (7)
    • August (9)
    • July (13)
    • June (14)
    • May (16)
    • April (17)
    • March (14)
    • February (9)
    • January (16)
  • 2010

    • December (15)
    • November (16)
    • October (16)
    • September (13)
    • August (6)
    • July (17)
    • June (11)
    • May (20)
    • April (25)
    • March (6)

Tags

  • All
  • rational-optimist (609)
  • wall-street-journal (59)
  • the-times (246)
  • Rational Opimist (5)
  • spectator (30)
  • telegraph (30)
  • prospect (1)
  • lecture (1)
  • general (36)
  • human-genome (1)
  • radio (1)
  • financial post (1)
  • the-times (52)
  • Spectator (6)
  • wall-street-journal (62)
  • Australian (1)
  • spiked! (1)
  • Telegraph (1)
  • evolution (2)
  • genetics (1)
  • technology (1)
  • the times (1)
  • shale-gas (1)
  • climate (1)
  • meteorite (1)
  • ice age (1)
  • confirmation bias (1)
  • general (3)
  • the times (1)
  • climate (2)
  • poverty reduction (1)
  • gmos (7)
  • golden rice (1)
  • quillette (1)
  • the critic (1)
  • fracking (2)
  • shale gas (1)
  • extinction rebellion (1)
  • eu (1)
  • regulation (1)
  • innovation (10)
  • the spectator (2)
  • economics (2)
  • environment (12)
  • inequality (1)
  • Reaction (1)
  • Climate (1)
  • BBC (1)
  • The Times (1)
  • Brexit (1)
  • EU (1)
  • Free Trade (1)
  • brexit (6)
  • house-of-lords (2)
  • iea (1)
  • podcast (2)
  • kirkus (1)
  • how-innovation-works (17)
  • book-reviews (3)
  • reddit (1)
  • the-spectator (4)
  • biology (19)
  • coronavirus (62)
  • free-market-conservatives (1)
  • boris-johnson (1)
  • the-critic (3)
  • globalvision (1)
  • energy (12)
  • reaction (1)
  • appearances (5)
  • yaron-brook (1)
  • corona (2)
  • the-remnant (1)
  • political-orphanage (1)
  • blazetv (1)
  • inside-sources (1)
  • PERC (1)
  • samanth-subramanian (1)
  • adam-hart (1)
  • national-review (1)
  • origin-of-covid (21)
  • trade (1)
  • discourse (1)
  • warp-news (1)
  • vaccination (1)
  • the-knowledge-project (1)
  • genetic-literacy-project (1)
  • PoliticsHome (1)
  • food (1)
  • genetics (1)
  • insects (1)
  • interview (1)
  • science (3)
  • daily-mail (2)
  • radix (1)
  • china (3)
  • books (1)
  • politics (1)
  • uk-politics (6)
  • video (1)
  • spiked (2)
  • omicron (1)
  • the-sun (2)
  • russia (1)
  • africa (1)

Welcome to Matt Ridley's Blog

  • Home >
  • Blog

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.

Please note that this blog does not accept comments. If you're reading this blog and want to respond then please use the contact form on the site, or comment on his Facebook page. You can also follow him on Twitter @mattwridley.

Sign up for his new newsletter and like the new Viral Facebook page to make sure you don't miss any upcoming content.

availablenow.2to1.png

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: August, 2021

  • Dismantling the environmental theory for Covid’s origins

    Published on: Saturday, 28 August, 2021

    My article for Spectator:

    With a laboratory leak in Wuhan looking more and more likely as the source of the pandemic, the Chinese authorities are not the only ones dismayed. Western environmentalists had been hoping to turn the pandemic into a fable about humankind’s brutal rape of Gaia. Even if ‘wet’ wildlife markets and smuggled pangolins were exonerated in this case, they argued, and the outbreak came from some direct contact with bats, the moral lesson was ecological. Deforestation and climate change had left infected bats stressed and with nowhere to go but towns. Or it had driven desperate people into bat-infested caves in search of food or profit.

    Green grandees were in no doubt of this moral lesson. ‘Nature is sending us a message. We have pushed nature into a corner, encroached on ecosystems,’ said Inger Andersen, head of the United Nations Environment Programme. The pandemic was ‘a reminder of the intimate and delicate relationship between people and planet,’ said the director-general of the World Health Organisation, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. ‘God always forgives, we forgive sometimes, but nature never forgives,’ added Pope Francis, enigmatically. ‘Climate change is a threat multiplier for pandemic diseases, and zoonotic diseases,’ said John Kerry. Covid-19 was ‘the product of an imbalance in man’s relationship with the natural world,’ said Boris Johnson. ‘Mother Nature… gave us fire and floods, she tried to warn us but in the end she took back control,’ tweeted Sarah, Duchess of York.

    Read Full Post
    By: Matt Ridley | Tagged: spectator, environment, coronavirus, origin-of-covid
  • The radical potential of nuclear fusion exposes the folly of our net zero deadline

    Published on: Saturday, 21 August, 2021

    Future technology that could power a city with a device the size of a shipping container may prove a better bet than harnessing the wind

    My article for Telegraph:

    In a key milestone on the road to harnessing fusion power, Lawrence Livermore laboratory announced this week that it had extracted energy from an object the size of a lemon pip at the rate of 10 quadrillion watts (joules per second), albeit for only 100 trillionths of a second. That’s roughly 500 times faster than the entire human population consumes energy.

    The experiment is a reminder that the energy density achieved when atoms merge is vastly greater than anything in a lump of coal, let alone a puff of wind. It is also far bigger than can be achieved by nuclear fission and much safer too: no risk of meltdown and with much less high-level radioactive waste. 

    Read Full Post
    By: Matt Ridley | Tagged: telegraph, energy, environment
  • Playing the wild card

    Published on: Wednesday, 04 August, 2021

    “Rewilding” is fashionable but there is more to it than letting Nature run free

    My article for The Critic:Near Fukushima, ten years after the nuclear accident that followed the tsunami, wild boar have colonised the suburbs. Near Chernobyl, bison and wolves wander abandoned streets. There is no doubt that if humans vanished, indigenous wildlife would return in abundance, minus the mammoths and sabre-tooths that our ancestors extinguished.

    Rewilding is all the rage, and it is coming soon to a hillside near you. But what form should it take and how should it be done? In practice, rewilding began quite a long time ago. A recent study found that, contrary to what most people believe, the world now has more trees than 35 years ago and much of the regrowth is natural regeneration: Europe alone has gained an area of tree cover greater than France.

    New England was once wall-to-wall fields; now it is a deer-filled forest pockmarked with cities and freeways. Wolves and beavers are spreading in Europe; cougars and bears in North America. There are 80,000 humpback whales today: there were 5,000 in the 1960s. Where I used to fish in the river Tyne as a boy, otters, buzzards and salmon were vanishingly rare; now they are common.

    Read Full Post
    By: Matt Ridley | Tagged: the-critic, biology
  • Put the animal sentience bill out of its misery

    Published on: Tuesday, 03 August, 2021

    Lobsters and the like are given no more protection from cruelty under this legislation but bureaucrats will thrive on it

    My article for the Times:

    Like a lobster in boiling water, a parliamentary bill on animal sentience is being tortured in the House of Lords. The problem is political rather than ethical. Nobody objects to some animals being declared sentient, but the government seems to be saying to one audience that the bill is a dramatic change that will do more to prevent suffering, while to another audience it insists that the bill is an empty gesture that will change nothing.

    The real reason for the bill goes back to 2017. Some alert activist who did not like Brexit spotted that in leaving the European Union we would lose the passing reference in Article 13 of the Lisbon Treaty that animals are sentient. This was quickly weaponised in a letter-writing campaign to MPs. But there were two problems with the argument.

    Read Full Post
    By: Matt Ridley | Tagged: the-times, biology
Subscribe to my blog

Receive all my latest posts straight to your inbox. simply subscribe below:

Name: *  
Email: *    
Captcha
Type the characters: *  
Please note: Any personal information you supply by submitting this form will be used solely for the purpose it was intended for. We will not be passing your information onto a third party or using your email for any additional marketing. Please also refer to our Privacy Policy on our website.

[*] denotes a required field

  • Site Map
  • Accessibility
  • Privacy Policy
Site by: Retox Digital