Lord Matthew White Ridley will be familiar to most of you as the person who wrote a really good book on evolutionary biology, but later became a “lukewarmist,” a variety of climate change denier who claims global warming is real but not important. To him, this may apply. He is armored in protective privilege as a wealthy member of the royal class of Britain, and he makes some of his money mining coal on his own land.

Ridley has made a remarkable claim that leaves some of us wondering what his next move should be, and what it will, in fact, be.

According to a DeSmog UK investigation, Ridley stands to earn ver 4 million pounds a year from opencast coal minds on his estate through at least 2020. But, he …

… adamantly denies any suggestion his coal interests influences his “skepticism” about climate science. And he continues to mine the vast expanses of coal even though he “could probably earn even more from renewable energy”.

The hapless former boss of Northern Rock wrote in The Times: “If we could phase out coal without causing too much suffering, then I would not object.”

He added: “As a landowner, I am astonished by the generosity of the offers I keep receiving for green-energy subsidies.”

“A solar developer wrote to me recently saying he could offer more than a million pounds of income over 25 years if I were to cover some particular fields with solar panels.”

So why doesn’t he do the right thing? Why not keep the Carbon in the ground, and instead develop clean energy ventures on his estate?

Go read the DeSmog piece by Montague, Mandel and Heasman for an analysis.