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: Would Suing the Bureaucracy Bring Us More Water?

October 17, 2024 6:30 amOctober 17, 2024 6:31 am

There isn’t a major water project in California in the last 30 years or more that hasn’t been subject to relentless litigation. Usually the litigators represent powerful environmentalist organizations, sometimes they represent social justice groups, and sometimes they represent labor....

Ringside: The Disruptive Potential of Photovoltaics

October 9, 2024 4:00 pmOctober 9, 2024 4:25 pm

Earlier this year the New York Times published an opinion piece “What Will We Do With Our Free Power?,” written by David Wallace Wells. The sheer optimism of the piece was a breath of fresh air. Rather than emphasizing the existential terror...

Ringside: Time to Gut and Amend California’s Rogue Water Agencies

October 3, 2024 3:30 amOctober 3, 2024 3:31 am

In California today, we have given unelected state bureaucrats the power to make decisions that affect millions of people and cost billions of dollars, and there is almost no recourse. There is also very little public criticism of the decisions...

Ringside: What’s Behind Newsom’s ‘Special Session’ on Gasoline Prices

September 25, 2024 5:11 pmSeptember 26, 2024 12:45 pm

By now most of the mega-majority Democrats in our state legislature understand basic facts about energy in California: We still derive 50 percent of our total energy from petroleum, and another 30 percent of our energy from natural gas. This...

Ringside: Final Legislative Session is Engineered Chaos

September 21, 2024 9:00 amSeptember 22, 2024 12:33 pm

How legislation is enacted in any democratic institution is inherently chaotic. That’s a feature of democracy, not a defect. It’s part of what separates us from authoritarian regimes where the legislature, such as it is, obediently passes whatever legislation they’re...

Ringside: Congress Comes to Santa Nella to Talk About Water

September 19, 2024 6:42 amSeptember 19, 2024 6:42 am

The Great Valley of California, one of “the more notable structural depressions in the world,” covers an area of 20,000 square miles. More than half of it, about 6.7 million acres, or over 10,000 square miles, is irrigated farmland. If you...

Ringside: AB 460 Hands Water Bureaucrats Even More Power

September 12, 2024 2:55 amSeptember 12, 2024 6:26 am

Siskiyou and Modoc counties have a combined population of 52,700 people and combined area of 10,227 miles. That’s less than the population of Yucaipa in a territory the size of Massachusetts. It’s a big place with almost no political clout. That’s why back...