{"id":1201531,"date":"2023-09-05T22:08:52","date_gmt":"2023-09-05T22:08:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/grist.org\/?p=617757"},"modified":"2023-09-05T22:08:52","modified_gmt":"2023-09-05T22:08:52","slug":"burning-mans-climate-reckoning-has-begun","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2023\/09\/05\/burning-mans-climate-reckoning-has-begun\/","title":{"rendered":"Burning Man\u2019s climate reckoning has begun"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
Burning Man, the transient bacchanal that attracts more than 70,000 party-goers to the remote Nevada desert for eight days every August, prides itself on its environmental bona fides. One of the festival\u2019s main operational tenets<\/a> is \u201cleave no trace,\u201d an essentially impossible feat for an event of its size. The Burning Man Project, the organization that runs the festival, has set a goal of becoming \u201ccarbon negative\u201d \u2014 removing more emissions from the environment than the festival produces \u2014 by 2030. <\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s a tall order: The festival generates around 100,000 tons of carbon dioxide every year, the equivalent of burning over 100 million pounds of coal. A series of disasters at this year\u2019s festival have brought the gap between Burning Man\u2019s rhetoric and reality into sharp relief: First, a half dozen protesters demanding stronger environmental commitments from the organization blocked the festival\u2019s entrance for roughly an hour before they were forcibly removed. Days later, torrential rain \u2014 the kind of event made more likely and extreme by climate change \u2014 stranded revelers in a dystopian free-for-all. But the greatest irony of all may be Burning Man\u2019s less-publicized opposition to renewable energy in its own backyard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Burning Man\u2019s problems began on August 27, the first day of this year\u2019s festival, when a blockade of climate protesters created a miles-long traffic jam<\/a> on the two-lane highway into the dry lakebed of the Black Rock Desert, about 120 miles north of Reno, Nevada, where Burning Man takes place. In addition to calling for \u201csystemic change,\u201d they demanded that festival organizers take immediate steps to decrease the event\u2019s carbon footprint. Burning Man, which started out as a small gathering of artists on a beach in San Francisco in the 1980s, has grown into a massive event that attracts a growing percentage of the world\u2019s ultra-wealthy every year. The protestors, who were ultimately dispersed by police, demanded the festival \u201cban private jets, single-use plastics, unnecessary propane burning, and unlimited generator use per capita,\u201d among other requests. <\/p>\n\n\n\n