Can ‘Burning Man’ Go Green?

Travel Blog  •  Joanna Kakissis  •  07.07.08 | 9:59 AM ET

imageSierra’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).

 


Joanna Kakissis's writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Boston Globe and The Washington Post, among other publications. A contributor to the World Hum blog, she's currently a Ted Scripps fellow in environmental journalism at the University of Colorado in Boulder.


1 Comment for Can ‘Burning Man’ Go Green?

Marie Gillies 07.09.08 | 6:39 PM ET

I’ve always been concerned with the impact that Burning Man has had on the surrounding landscape. Although there’s “no driving”, art cars and other motorized vehicles are an exception to that rule and consequently, the land there is torn up badly, I’ve seen the before and after arial photos. And I’m sorry, driving hundreds or even thousands of miles to get to this remote location seems wasteful; it’s not as though these folks are traveling to experience another culture, they’re traveling to meet up with people who are just like them. Who’s “fossil-fuel addicted”? It’s always astonished me that when I ask people I know who are going why they go, invariably they say that this is the community they feel connected to; my response has always been that if they invested the same amount of time (sometimes months), money, and energy into their local community as they invest in Burning Man, they might actually have a meaningful impact on the world, as opposed to just having an experience. The bottom line is that the Black Rock Desert is too delicate for these crowds; they either need to move it or call it quits.  After all, it all started because some dude was upset about splitting up with his girlfriend; it’s not like it’s the Cheyenne Buffalo Hat Ceremony or anything.

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