Opinion: How to bring down gas prices in California (Hint: Pumping oil won’t help)

Growing up in California in the 1990s, I remember noticing gas prices along the drive to school. Any time the signs showed more than a dollar a gallon, we would hear the late great Bob Edwards on my parents’ car radio, interviewing energy experts on NPR’s “Morning Edition” about why costs were so high and when they’d come back down.

Now, as a professor of energy politics at UC Santa Barbara, I’m asked the same questions. Students, my family, government leaders and journalists covering the race for governor all want to know...