In California, they pave paradise and put up luxury homes.

Which is better than a parking lot, I suppose. Since parking lots in California serve no other earthly purpose than to provide a place for Hummers to hang out.

But then, so do luxury homes.

That’s ok, we didn’t need those priceless, irreplaceable wetlands, anyway. I’m sure we can always go back and fix it later. After we’ve killed off the endangered species that inhabit it. It’ll only take evolution another 10 billion years to recreate them. No worries.

Being environmentally minded sucks. First of all, you’re annoying as hell. Everyone thinks you think you’re better than them (alas, the veggies suffer the same plight - life is So Hard when you’re right!). Secondly, the world is bleak, bleak, bleak. You can’t open your eyes without being assaulted by destruction, followed by an irrevocable, soul-stripping sense of loss.

But I understand. There’s money to be made. It would be against our free-market sensibilities to let this opportunity go to waste. Or, god forbid, recognize some value in an integral part of the ecosystem and beautiful natural heritage of Southern California.

Pretty soon, all that’s going to be left of SoCal is Scottsdale. How can they bulldoze everything that is distinctive of the region and put up some cookie-cutter monstrosity that belongs in Arizona? The tragedy of living in a place as beautiful as California is that you feel it slipping away right before your eyes. Elsewhere, you can depend on things being there tomorrow. There’s not so much rapacious construction in Europe or on the East Coast that you feel like you’re being closed in by five-bedroom Tuscan-style villas. You don’t get the sense that the whole of the region’s natural endowments are on the verge of being swallowed up by identical, increasingly exclusive and extravagant developments. (Although it could be worse: in Phoenix, you get the sneaking suspicion that the noose of Taco Bells draws ominously tighter by the day.)

Everybody just wants a piece of it. Of course, I shouldn’t complain. I grew up there. Carping about the travesty of the gluttonous development strategy in Southern California is akin to those jerks who complain about all the Californians in Arizona. (Like, hello! You’re so over it! We hate being here too.)

Everybody wants a piece of it, and then they complain that everybody else who wants a piece is desecrating it.

The worst part is it’s not even fun to be cynical about.