Golden Debacle – The California political machine is no model for the nation
Golden Debacle – The California political machine is no model for the nation
Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign has been light on policy specifics, but her political inheritance provides clues. Harris is a creature, after all, of the California political machine. What real-world results has that machine produced? The Golden State still has a powerful economic base, though its government budgets are once again in deficit territory. California’s success,...
By Edward Ring
California’s Unstoppable Taxation Machine
California’s Unstoppable Taxation Machine
The powers that be seek to make it virtually impossible for state residents to restrain taxation and spending. Every two years, in addition to electing their state and local officials, Californians participate in so-called citizen democracy, a process by which they approve or reject legislation in the form of ballot initiatives. This election season is...
By Edward Ring
Ways California Can Have Abundant Energy
Ways California Can Have Abundant Energy
With the right combination of new policies in California, abundant energy ought to be just around the corner. Nearly all new energy development can be privately financed, and it can be delivered while creating tens of thousands of high paying jobs. But for this to happen, California’s state legislators will need to accept the following...
By Edward Ring
Would Suing the Bureaucracy Bring Us More Water?
Would Suing the Bureaucracy Bring Us More Water?
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. But in every case, they hit water projects from every legal angle imaginable, either completely...
By Edward Ring
The Disruptive Potential of Photovoltaics
The Disruptive Potential of Photovoltaics
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 of a climate crisis that renewable energy may help us avert, the author focused on...
By Edward Ring
Time to Gut and Amend California’s Rogue Water Agencies
Time to Gut and Amend California’s Rogue Water Agencies
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 these agencies make. That’s because the people who are most familiar with the extraordinary power...
By Edward Ring
Newsom’s “Special Session” on Gasoline Prices
Newsom’s “Special Session” on Gasoline Prices
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 makes them understandably reluctant to kill California’s oil and gas industry, and gives them pause...
By Edward Ring
Congress Comes to Santa Nella to Talk About Water
Congress Comes to Santa Nella to Talk About Water
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 drive south on the main north-south artery, Interstate 5, orchards and cultivated fields appear as...
By Edward Ring
AB 460 Hands Water Bureaucrats Even More Power
AB 460 Hands Water Bureaucrats Even More Power
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 in August 2022 when a handful of desperate ranchers and farmers along the Shasta River defied the...
By Edward Ring
California Policy Czars Ignore Water-Supply Solutions in Plain Sight
California Policy Czars Ignore Water-Supply Solutions in Plain Sight
The state is spending billions on water-rationing and tens of billions on a giant tunnel even though far better measures exist to keep faucets flowing. Chronic water scarcity in California is indeed the new normal, but it’s not because of climate change. Even if the state is destined to experience lengthier droughts and reduced snowpack,...
By Edward Ring
More Water Supply Requires Industry Unity
More Water Supply Requires Industry Unity
Probably the most consequential and controversial water policy decisions in California involve how much water to pump out of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and into southbound aqueducts, and we’re in the middle of another one right now. For the last several years, as summer turns to fall, state and federal regulators reduce the amount of...
By Edward Ring
Natural Gas Can Help Get California to Net Zero
Natural Gas Can Help Get California to Net Zero
But delivering the electricity it generates is the next big challenge. California’s official policy to combat climate change is to achieve “carbon neutrality” by 2045. There are many ways to get from here to there. As the state legislature and agencies navigate these options, they should take into account a few cautionary statistics. California currently consumes...
By Edward Ring
The Numbers Behind CARB’s Goal of “Net Zero”
The Numbers Behind CARB’s Goal of “Net Zero”
Nearly every analysis of energy policy in California, to the extent it delves into the numbers, tends to focus on one variable, CO2. But if you’re just trying to figure out how much energy we use today, where it’s coming from, and where we intend to source the clean energy of tomorrow, data on CO2...
By Edward Ring
Floating Offshore Wind – An Environmental Catastrophe
Floating Offshore Wind – An Environmental Catastrophe
Last week we examined California’s plans to install between 2,500 and 10,000 floating offshore wind turbines approximately 20 miles off the coast of San Luis Obispo and Humboldt counties. The estimated cost to install 25 gigawatts of capacity, which equates to 10 gigawatts of steady power if adequate storage assets are available, is at least...
By Edward Ring