Matt Ridley is the author of The Rational Optimist and a Member of the British House of Lords: Driven perhaps by envy at the attention that man-made climate change is getting and ambition to set up a great new intergovernmental body that can fly scientists to mega-conferences, biologists have gone into overdrive on the subject of biodiversity. They are right that there is a lot wrong with the world’s wildlife, that we can do much more to conserve, enhance and recover it, but much of the coverage in the media are frankly weird.