WELCOME TO MATT RIDLEY'S BLOG

Together with Stephen McBride, founder of the Rational Optimist Society, I have set up an account at Substack called the Rational Optimist. I encourage all readers of this blog to subscribe – initially for free – to that account:  https://rationaloptimistsociety.substack.com. Stephen and I will be posting there regularly from now on.

This appeared in The Daily Mail; https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14322465/power-station-green-energy-corruption-burn-matt-ridley.html   From 25,000 feet on a clear day, you can see the biggest wood-fired kettle in the world belching steam, as I did the other day on a flight to Newcastle. Called Drax power station, it lies between Selby and Goole in North Yorkshire and burns the equivalent […]

Appeared in the Telegraph; https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/01/23/green-energy-net-zero-renewables-uk-miliband/   Britain’s net zero plan is to nearly double the demand for electricity (for heating, transport and artificial intelligence) and switch off most of the supply (gas and much of nuclear). If you think that does not add up, you are right. Perhaps Ed (Miliwatt-hour) Miliband is deliberately showing Keir […]

Appeared in Spiked; https://www.spiked-online.com/2025/01/21/trump-takes-on-the-climatecrats/ No one should mourn America’s withdrawal from the ridiculous Paris Agreement. Donald Trump has pulled America out of the 2015 Paris Climate Accord for the second time. Bizarrely, like some dodgy insurance scam, the rules of the climatocracy say it takes a year to withdraw, so not till next winter America will […]

Appeared in the Spectator; https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/why-has-biden-pardoned-anthony-fauci/   Joe Biden left it until the last minute to issue a pre-emptive pardon of Anthony Fauci for any offence committed since 2014 in his work on “the White House Coronavirus Task Force or the White House Covid-19 Response Team, or as Chief Medical Advisor to the President”. Yet surely […]

Appeared in the Spectator; https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/how-i-fell-foul-of-youtubes-fact-checkers/ The day after Mark Zuckerberg said fact checkers “have destroyed more trust than they have created” I experienced why he has a point. I had done an interview with an evolutionary psychology podcaster, Paula Wright, about the origin of Covid. In it I said something that caused the entire interview […]

This appeared in The Daily Mail; https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-14239533/MATT-RIDLEY-Ozempic-weight-loss-drugs-end-obesity-illnesses.html Imagine if you could eat your fill on Christmas day then dial down your appetite for January. Good news: such a prospect may be within sight. Weight-loss drugs are getting better and achieving results where decades of hectoring and dieting have failed – in yet another miracle of […]

This appeared in the Spectator; https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/wuhan-wager-the-400-bio-bet-that-predicted-the-pandemic/ At the end of the year, one of the world’s most renowned scientists will send $400 to a charity to settle a wager with another of the world’s most renowned scientists. We don’t yet know which will win, but it is likely to be the wrong one, in my […]

Appeared in The Telegraph; https://www.telegraph.co.uk/us/comment/2024/12/06/explosive-truth-about-origin-covid-19-emerge/ Trump’s new lieutenants, Jay Bhattacharya and John Ratcliffe, are convinced that a lab leak was probably the source It is now five years since we woke to the news of a new outbreak of infectious pneumonia in China. Retelling the story of those early days of the Covid pandemic helps […]

This appeared in The Daily Mail; https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-14134949/MATT-RIDLEY-Labours-car-industry-wrecking-policy-Chinese-laughing.html   Unlucky Luton. The miserable news that Stellantis, the owner of Vauxhall, is considering laying off 1,100 workers from its van manufacturing plant is a hammer blow to the town. What makes it all the more painful is the knowledge that the damage is entirely avoidable and the […]