Pretty much the same happened to the European rain forest and is currently happening to east-Asian rain forests. What we've been doing is changing the environment to suit our needs as agriculturalists, but that's not an objective improvement from wasteland to garden-of-Eden.

Indeed; exactly with this transformation from "wasteland" (as you would maybe call it) to predatively exploited ecosystem (as I would call it) we (as agriculturalists) have infringed on the rights of all hunter/gatherers that have been there before. We've set up enclosures to limited their ability to travel from hunting ground to hunting ground, we've slaughtered their prey animals (i.e. bisons), all the while claiming that their are uncivilized and barbaric and that this is all for their best.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/wasteland

In the previous discussion, I was mainly focused on the 'barren' and 'barely inhabitable' aspects. If your sentiment was about cultivation; yeah, you're probably right. Hunter/gatherer societies usually do very little cultivation.

(There's some indication that the Amazonas river fronts were heavily cultivated in pre-columbian times, as the presence of terra preta implies, though)

In that case however we'll run into the discussion about 'improving the land', since arguably cutting down woods to make room for agriculturalists is not improving the land for hunter/gatherers.

Now we can bicker about the details. :D

However I am not in CA and it seems “society” over there has decided its not interested in housing homeless moms.

Sure, society can always compel and force somebody to obedience. That's why a society usually tries to monopolize the exertion of power through law enforcement. That might even give society the power to expel a homeless mother along with her children from a house that's been empty for 35 years.

My argument is not about ability but about morality.