Challenging the Premise of Our Destruction

By Edward Ring
05/17/2023
The most powerful and destructive perception in the world today is that using fossil fuels will cause catastrophic climate change. This belief, marketed by every major government and corporate institution in the Western world, is the foundational premise underlying a policy agenda of stunning indifference to the aspirations of ordinary people. The war on fossil...

TAGS: California environment, California Environmental Quality Act, conservation, environmentalism, environmentalists

Plastic Bags and the Recycling and Reuse Scam

By Edward Ring
04/02/2020
Back in 2014, the California Legislature passed Senate Bill 207, which banned grocery stores from offering customers “single use” carryout bags. Permanent implementation was delayed by a November 2016 voter referendum, Prop. 67, that unsuccessfully attempted to repeal the measure. Today it is well established law. The only way SB 207 was sold to the grocery industry...

TAGS: Edward Ring, environmentalists, Jerry Brown

The Wondrous, Magnificent Cities of the 21st Century

By Edward Ring
03/10/2020
The American Conservative recently laid an egg. They published a misanthropic, pessimistically aggressive Malthusian screed, written by James Howard Kunstler. Kunstler’s “Why America’s Urban Dreams Went Wrong” attacks pretty much every urban amenity Americans have built since the invention of the automobile. And his reasoning, all of it, reflects a dismal lack of faith in human...

TAGS: cities, Edward Ring, environmentalists, Housing, libertarians, Suburbs

Libertarians, Government Unions, and Infrastructure Development

By Edward Ring
05/05/2015
“Alright, but apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, the fresh water system and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?” –  John Cleese, Monty Python’s Life of Brian, 1979 Any discussion of California’s neglected infrastructure has to recognize the three factors most responsible, libertarians, environmentalists, and...

TAGS: California infrastructure, environmentalists, libertarians, pension fund solvency, private sector unions, public sector unions

Public Sector Environmentalists vs. Jobs

By Steve Malanga
11/03/2014
On October 24th I observed in the WSJ that private and public unions were increasingly in conflict this election season, particularly as left-leaning public union leaders align with members of the Democratic coalition like environmentalists, whose no-growth economic policies cost blue-collar workers jobs. One example I didn’t discuss in that piece is a campaign transpiring in California,...

TAGS: Chris Christie, environmentalists, Northern California District Council of Laborers

The Unholy Trinity of Public Sector Unions, Environmentalists, and Wall Street

By Edward Ring
05/06/2014
Taken at surface value, there ought to be minimal identity of interests between these three special interests. But if you follow the money and power instead of the rhetoric and stereotypes, you will find this unhealthy alliance is alive and thriving. For example, unions use “greenmail,” the threat of a lawsuit on environmentalist grounds, to...

TAGS: construction unions, environmentalists, high speed rail, occupy movement, public sector unions, Wall Street

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California’s Literacy Crisis

For decades, teachers, parents, academics, scientists, and curriculum developers have been engaged in a pitched battle over the best methods to implement effective, comprehensive and practical reading instruction. This controversy, dubbed the “reading wars,” has had lifelong consequences for a generation of students who have been hostages and unwitting casualties of the war. Experts believe...

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