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The Matt Ridley Prize for Environmental Heresy
Tuesday, March 13, 2012 at 06:15PM I should start this post with my usual boilerplate disclaimer when discussing environmental issues: I live in Cambridge, I ride my bike everywhere, I am concerned about global warming, but more concerned about issues to do with water (both drinking, and the kind that is losing all of its fish).
But I find most of the things people like to propose as ways of solving our problems, like high-speed trains, wind generators, and electric cars, are kind of...silly. There is no way a dollar spent on any of those things generates anything like a dollar's worth of value. They have a vaguely cargo cultish feel to them: useless rituals performed by people who do not understand the real means of production. Wind towers are really just fancy statues of John Frum. These things will bring us Green Cargo.
Well, I started to tell you about how, really, I was one of the great and the good, and now I've gotten all Copenhagen Consensus on you, which just demonstrates my unreliability. You now suspect I am in the pocket of the Heartland Institute.
So, with that preparation, via Knowledge Problem, a notice that the U.K. magazine Spectator has announced the Matt Ridley Prize for Environmental Heresy: a £8500 prize for the best 1,000 to 2,000 word essay the makes
the most brilliant and rational argument — that uses reason and evidence — to gore a sacred cow of the environmental movement. There are many to choose from: the idea that wind power is good for the climate, or that biofuels are good for the rain forest, or that organic farming is good for the planet, or that climate change is a bigger extinction threat than invasive species, or that the most sustainable thing we can do is de-industrialise.
Over $13,000 by today's exchange rate. That's midlist novel advance-level money!
BTW, now you know why midlist authors are pathetic.
I like Matt Ridley's science journalism, and it's a challenge worth taking up. Entries close June 30, 2012.
Reader Comments (2)
As you may know, Matt Ridley was chairman of Northern Rock bank when it collapsed in 2007 after a run, the first UK bank to do so in 150 years. Its shareholders lost everything. It had been doing the usual CDOs that shortly thereafter tripped up Wall Street. Why should anyone take anything he does seriously?
Now, that's interesting. I know Matt Ridley as a science writer (The Red Queen, Genome, etc.), and had totally missed his executive role at Northern Rock.
I have my somewhat crankish, get-off-my-lawn animus against wind power all on my own, so he played into an existing prejudice of mine. And I find earnest greenies tiresome on my own too, while recognizing the serious environmental threats we face.
So, I'll keep an eye on Mr. Ridley, while trying to win his money.