Author: Edward Ring

Edward Ring is the director of water and energy policy for the California Policy Center, which he co-founded in 2013 and served as its first president. The California Policy Center is an educational non-profit focused on public policies that aim to improve California’s democracy and economy. He is also a senior fellow of the Center for American Greatness. Ring is the author of two books: "Fixing California - Abundance, Pragmatism, Optimism" (2021), and "The Abundance Choice - Our Fight for More Water in California" (2022).

Ringside: The Best Way to Eliminate Methane Leaks is to Drill

June 25, 2026 6:30 amJune 25, 2026 6:31 am

California’s oil industry has been active for well over a century, and Los Angeles was always at the heart of it. By 1894, about 80 wells were already producing oil in the city, setting off a boom that peaked in the 1970s...

Ringside: How Much Flow Preserves the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta?

June 18, 2026 7:00 amJune 18, 2026 7:01 am

When choosing what policies and projects might best ensure abundant water for California’s ecosystems, farms, and cities, the role of the delta is central. Even if large scale desalination were to someday deliver over a million acre feet of water...

Ringside: An Alternative Vision – Keep Scott Dam, Save Lake Pillsbury

June 11, 2026 6:00 amJune 11, 2026 5:30 pm

A recent article in Grist characterized recent efforts by the Trump administration to preserve Scott Dam as a “culture war crusade.” That is accurate, so long as we recognize that efforts to demolish the dam – and diminish the value of the...

Ringside: Californians Will Consume AT LEAST Another Five Billion Barrels of Crude Oil

June 4, 2026 6:00 amJune 4, 2026 6:01 am

There is no realistic scenario imaginable that does not include Californians consuming at least another five billion barrels of oil before the state achieves its much touted official goal of a “clean energy future.” Here are the numbers: In 2025...

Ringside: Chad Bianco Could Hand the U.S. Congress to Democrats

June 1, 2026 1:20 pmJune 1, 2026 5:03 pm

As we ponder the results of the election in progress, wondering which races will have known outcomes by the end of the evening and which shall end up so close that it will take a month before we have final...

Ringside: Fine Tuning the Environmentalist’s ‘Water Renaissance’ Plan for California

May 27, 2026 2:11 pmMay 27, 2026 2:12 pm

The recently released “Water Renaissance” plan, a product of “conservation groups and tribes,” gets a very big idea right. There is no reason why California’s coastal megacities should have to import water. With that one visionary presumption, this report has...

Ringside: California’s Plans for Energy and Water Can be Misleading

May 20, 2026 4:53 pmMay 20, 2026 4:53 pm

When Governor Gavin Newsom’s water plan calls for nine million acre feet of new water supply, it turns out part of that total is increased storage capacity in reservoirs, which will not result in an equivalent amount of available water....