Here in San Antonio urbanites drive around in giant SUVs and pickup trucks without a speck of dirt on them. In the country, people who drive pickups USE pickups. I know the ranchettes you are talking about, though, they are creeping up the highway from San Antonio. Ranchers with thousands of acres of heritage land and a need for cash sell to developers who create those ranchettes for people who want to get away from the city.
Last year as the drought reached its peak and people in my rural town were worrying about whether they could stay, I heard one lifetime San Antonio resident ask "The aquifer can't really run out of water can it?"
People out here who hunt eat what they kill. Urbanites come out here, kill and leave carcasses so they can mount antlers on their walls. People out here monitor herds of exotic deer that long ago bred out of control. We eat a lot of venison because there are no natural predators for these herds. Rural folk rely on the land. They start to abuse it because the demand for resources from the cities creates jobs - at least until those resources are depleted. The dangerous ones in the rural areas are the ones who believe the resources are infinite. They are here and they are dangerous to us all. That's when certain "conservative" mindsets get twisted.
San Francisco is a very progressive and aware city. Other urban areas are not and some are practically deluded in their approach to the environment whether they are pro-environment, anti-environment or simply think they are pro-environment. In Minnesota, the feldgling Green party nearly collapsed under the weight of a disagreement over hunting. The urbanites wanted it banned in all forms. The rural Greens relied on it to live. There was a hue rift and disagreement over who actually was environmentally aware.
Most of my view comes from experience doing wildlife education. Most people I encounter are enamored of the animals we teach about but they have no clue how important they are to their own lives. For too long environmentalism has relied too heavily on beauty for its marketing and too little on actually educating people about basic biology.
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