Can ‘Burning Man’ Go Green?

Sierra’s Matthew Taylor is skeptical. North America’s most well-known gathering of counterculture enthusiasts seeking radical self-expression attracts more than 40,000 people to Nevada’s Black Rock Desert annually, climaxing with a symbolic incineration of something very giant. Last year it was a 99-foot-tall wooden oil derrick, intended to symbolize the “crash of our fossil-fuel-addicted civilization.” But some volunteers from the Burning Man festival, which takes place for eight days ending each Labor Day weekend, say the pyrotechnics demonstrate environmental irresponsibility in seriously troubled times.

They want Burning Man organizers to make the event far more sustainable and dispense with frivolous gestures such as offering guilt-soothing “eco-confessional booths” run by “priests” from the Dominican University of California. “Let’s build systems where people get together and renew and restore our dying planet, rather than burn things to prove a point,” said volunteer Kachina Katrina Zavalney.

Photo by lightmatter via Flickr (Creative Commons).

 

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