California faces no shortage of criticism from policy analysts. Whether you look at its high electricity and gas prices, resulting from its “green” approach to energy that has caused the state to lose 17% of its refining capacity over the past seven months and reduce natural gas’s use in electricity generation at a time of growing demand, or its barriers to build that have led to an overpriced and underpromised high-speed rail system and housing shortage, there are many avenues of attack.

Knowledge of the burdens California imposes on producers and developers has become increasingly pervasive throughout American society, providing evidence that the famous phrase, “politics is downstream of culture,” also works in reverse. Exhibit A: HBO’s Euphoria, whose Season 3 premiere amassed 8.5 million viewers in the first three days after release.

One should be forgiven for questioning what a show that takes the amount of drama, drugs, sex, and violence to a new extreme — and then even further — would have to do about public policy. Believe it or not, however, the showwriters decided to make California’s strict environmental standards play a key role early in the season. Specifically, a major part of the plot hinges on the inability to build on the site of an endangered flower.

Without going too deeply into the show’s plot or revealing too many spoilers, Nate Jacobs (played by Jacob Elordi) runs a real estate construction company that is trying to build a senior-living home, but runs into trouble when some “white fritillaries” are found on the site. This discovery causes the project to halt construction until an environmental review can be conducted at the site, setting off a chain of events that leaves Jacobs in debt and misery.

While this situation involves significant dramatization, the basic facts match reality. Commonly known as the fragrant fritillary, the flower is listed on the California Native Plant Society’s List 1B: 1-2-3, a classification that denotes that the flower is “rare, threatened, or endangered in California; rare but found in sufficient numbers and distributed widely enough that the potential for extinction is low at this time; endangered in a portion of its range; and endemic to California.” Because it is listed as “rare, threatened, or endangered,” if a developer encounters a fragrant fritillary, the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) requires a local or state agency to address how the project will affect the flower in environmental documentation before construction.

Passed in 1970 — the same year as the federal National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) was signed into law — the CEQA “requires that state and local agencies disclose and evaluate the significant environmental impacts of proposed projects and adopt all feasible mitigation measures to reduce or eliminate those impacts.” Like NEPA, it “applies to projects undertaken, funded or requiring an issuance of a permit by a public agency,” invoking different levels of review depending on the level of the environmental effect. For instance, a “detailed” environmental impact report (EIR) is required when an agency “finds substantial evidence that the project may have a significant effect on the environment.” EIRs involve a multi-step process of notice, draft, public review, and certification before a project can move forward, and the report must include a mitigation monitoring and reporting program.

The problems with the CEQA resemble those with NEPA. Procedural requirements lead to substantive delays and costs as interest groups weaponize the law to obstruct projects they dislike. Examples of projects delayed by the CEQA include a food bank and a housing project for the homeless. According to a 2022 report by the Pacific Research Institute, agencies take between 13 and 38 months longer to approve projects subjected to an EIR. Importantly, this doesn’t include litigation, which could take anywhere from eight months to two years. And because California’s courts grant almost anyone “beneficially interested” in a project standing, the chances of substantial projects facing lawsuits are increased. Even without lawsuits, the risk of litigation adds an extra layer of expense and time that project developers have to be wary of, which can create enough uncertainty that some projects never even start.

Both CEQA and NEPA attempt to perpetuate the conditions where “man and nature can exist in productive harmony,” but they result in an unproductive “harmony” of quiet work sites and full courtrooms. By allowing a flower that’s not even at risk of extinction to stand in the way of economically beneficial projects through longer reviews and opportunities for litigation, California makes it clear that human welfare is subservient to nature.

It should be no surprise that knowledge about California’s woes has seeped into its very own media industry. The state’s present policy outlook stands in sharp contrast to its cultural and commercial dominance, embodied by Hollywood and Silicon Valley, respectively, and that paradox should inevitably raise some eyebrows. Until California reverses course and becomes a hub for development and production once again, it will remain a state where it makes sense to wonder what could have been.

This article originally appeared at Real Clear Energy