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. He is also a senior fellow with the Center for American Greatness, and a regular contributor to the California Globe. His work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Economist, National Review, City Journal, and other media outlets. Ring’s undergraduate degree is in Political Science from UC Davis, and he has an MBA in Finance from USC. Ring is the author of several books, including “Fixing California – Abundance, Pragmatism, Optimism” (2021), “The Abundance Choice – Our Fight for More Water in California” (2022), and “Solutions – Innovative Public Policy for California” (2024).
A historic barrage of atmospheric rivers hit California. Across the Sierra Nevada and down through the foothills into the valley, rivers turned into raging torrents, overflowing their banks and flooding entire communities. California’s Central Valley turned into an inland sea, as low lying farms and grasslands were incapable of draining the deluge. That was 1861,...
By Edward Ring
Debates over the efficacy of water projects often focus on the monthly cost to end users. For example, in May 2022, a few days before the California Coastal Commission voted unanimously to deny the final permit to build a desalination plant in Huntington Beach, the influential Los Angeles Times columnist Michael Hiltzik fretted that it “might drive up the...
By Edward Ring
Here’s a reality check that ought to keep politicians up at night in California. Despite being a sunny, solar-friendly state, with ample areas blessed with high wind, California still derives 50 percent of its total energy from crude oil. Another 34 percent comes from natural gas. This fossil fuel total for California energy, 84 percent, actually...
By Edward Ring
Here’s a reality check that ought to keep politicians up at night in California. Despite being a sunny, solar friendly state, with ample areas blessed with high wind, California still derives 50 percent of its total energy from crude oil. Another 34 percent comes from natural gas. This fossil fuel total for California energy, 84 percent,...
By Edward Ring
If you scan news reports and search results for Klamath Dams removal, the news is universally upbeat. “The river will run free again.” “A step towards justice.” “Largest river restoration project in American history!” But as waters now drain out of the reservoirs behind these half-demolished dams for the last time, unanswered questions persist. How...
By Edward Ring
When a public policy decision is flawed, and the reasons it is flawed are simple and obvious, and the consequences are huge and costly, the appropriate response for a concerned observer is to call attention to the looming debacle. Not just once, but over and over and over again. An example of an impending economic...
By Edward Ring
This week, we return to the topic of water. Along with energy, water abundance is a nonnegotiable prerequisite for conditions we value and aspire to achieve: prosperity, affordability, resilience, and equity. But judging from California’s restrictive policies over the past fifty years, continuously escalating in severity and scope, you would think the opposite is true....
By Edward Ring
In so many ways that it almost defies description, California’s lawmakers have relied on obtuse, punitive, flawed logic to justify recently passed laws implementing urban water rationing in California. Rather than undertake the Sisyphean task of enumerating them, let’s just focus on one critical factor: the opportunity cost. California’s urban water consumption is already down...
By Edward Ring
After the deluge that inundated California during our most recent water season, there is no chance Californians will confront a water supply crisis this year. Water levels, as reported by the California Data Exchange Center, are above the historical average for this date in every one of California’s major reservoirs. But storms of scarcity remain on...
By Edward Ring
The optimal public policy regarding unions may not be realistic in states like California, but that shouldn’t prevent us from performing an occasional what-if. For anyone even slightly right-of-center, what unions have done to this state is a catastrophe. And even for those to the left-of-center, many are realizing, for example, that California’s failing system...
By Edward Ring
If there is anything that unites Californians it is a belief that anything is possible. How else to explain our state’s mad rush into renewables. Even a skeptic ought to be impressed. With massive wealth, a diverse and resilient economy, abundant sunshine and mild winters, and infinite reserves of imagination that define our culture, the...
By Edward Ring
As we move into the final month of 2023, it is appropriate to review recent legislative actions that will have a significant impact on California’s ability to deliver abundant and affordable energy and water to its residents. There isn’t much good news. Almost without exception, the California Legislature is making energy and water scarce and...
By Edward Ring
On October 4 the California State Water Board held a hearing to discuss how it will implement Senate Bill 1157, passed by the state legislature in 2022, which lowers indoor water-use standards to 47 gallons per person starting in 2025 and 42 gallons in 2030. The title of the hearing was “Making Water Conservation a Way...
By Edward Ring
On September 16, with great fanfare, California Attorney General Rob Bonta announced his office had filed a lawsuit against five major oil companies. Accusing them of knowingly misleading the public regarding the alleged harm that fossil fuels would inflict on the climate, Bonta’s office seeks billions in compensatory damages. But the climate change theory that...
By Edward Ring
a new form will got here