Even HBO knows you can’t build in California
By
William Rampe
|
May 23rd, 2026
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.
https://www.cfact.org/2026/05/23/even-hbo-knows-you-cant-build-in-california/
