[amy214]

California is like this, for different reasons. Mostly the leaders think nature > humanity so the more they cap the knees of civilization, more for nature, and that's a good and meaningful legacy in their minds. Of course this is a politically dangerous thing to speak up about publicly, so it's more along the lines of "uhhh we need to make sure the house you build is safe, so you need 50,000 pages describing how safe it is, must be evaluated by an army of Phds, and rejections take 5 years"