In June 18, 2024, the Clark County Commission voted to accept a legal settlement under which the county will pay developer Jim Rhodes $80 million and allow him to develop 3,500 luxury homes on Blue Diamond Hill, overlooking the Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area. This avoids the county potentially paying Rhodes $2 billion, which would have meant financial ruin.
I sat on the left side of the county chamber room with other supporters of keeping Red Rock Canyon rural. I wore a red shirt I had just procured outside, in exchange for a donation, that said “Save Red Rock.” At the end of public comments, Commissioner Jim Gibson spoke about how the county didn’t want this development, that they had discouraged it for two decades, but, he said, now there was no other choice.
There’s always another choice. Blue Diamond Hill, where Rhodes owns and operates a lucrative gypsum mine, was zoned for rural development, meaning Rhodes could freely build one house every two acres. But he wanted it rezoned for denser suburban development. He wanted this because wealth begets greed in equal proportion, and Rhodes is very wealthy. Moreover, he wanted this because developers can’t stand to see land sit open like that. There’s something in the soul of capitalism that renders it incompatible with the open, and therefore with the wild and with wildness. This is capitalism’s greatest threat to the world and to the human being…