PLAN believes everyone has the right to live in a clean and healthy environment, regardless of their race, income or immigration status. Addressing our dependence as a nation, and especially in Nevada, on an extractive economy, is central to our Environmental Justice campaign.
Currently, poor and marginalized communities are disproportionately affected by pollution and climate change, while dirty fossil fuel and mining corporations rake in millions in profits.
Sweetheart Tax Deals Open-pit mining accounts for 90% of mining operations in Nevada, with the majority of gold extracted by two of the largest transnational mining corporations in the world, Barrick Gold and Newmont Mining. Last year Nevada mining corporations raked in 6.4 billion dollars in profits for their CEOs and shareholders.
This special treatment for corporations has consequences. Nevadans have long paid for foreign based mining corporation’s prosperity through failing schools and poor healthcare across the state. There is wealth in the state to invest in Nevadans, and the mining industry has an opportunity to work for the Nevadans they depend on for their massive profits.
People, Planet First Environmental Justice demands that public policy be based on mutual respect and justice for all peoples, free from any form of discrimination or bias, and affirms the sacredness of Mother Earth, ecological unity and the interdependence of all species, and the right to be free from ecological destruction.
Environmental justice is one of PLAN’s core founding principles. Our campaigns seek to enact concrete local and state policy changes that put People and Planet First.
The Silver State is in the bull’s eye of some of the most unconscionable and environmentally destructive projects in the world. Nevadan’s are still paying with their lives from above-ground nuclear weapons explosions in the 50s and 60s. We’re proud that Nevadans rose up in the early 1980s to defeat the military’s proposal to turn five million acres of our fragile Great Basin into an MX missile base. And we’re still winning our 30-year fight against the nuclear industry’s efforts to dump nuclear waste here. That fight, like others, requires that we continue to train and bring up new leaders who will be vigilant in the decades to come.
PLAN opposed the Las Vegas Water Grab, which was a victory that was won in 2020. The pipeline would have created a Owens Valley wasteland across a wide swath of the state, destroying the economy of rural Nevada and ranching as a way of life. Learn more about the victory and defeating the water grab through the Great Basin Water Network.
Many Nevadans are aware of the painful and bitter past and present history related to mining and the Western Shoshone people. Elder Carrie Dann and her family live next to Barrick’s Cortez Hills mine, one of the largest gold discoveries in North America. Barrick is currently mining beneath the white cliffs of Mt. Tenabo, a sacred place in the creation beliefs of the Western Shoshone. PLAN stands with the Western Shoshone in their efforts to reclaim their land and cultural resources.
