Rushed exodus frm rain soaked BurningMan could have adverse environmental impact
thenevadaindependent.com
thenevadaindependent.com
yeah, as the article mentions, Bureau of Land Management also noted this possible scenario in their permitting assessment
basically, this is a theoretical worst case scenario and nobody knows anything. despite the community's best efforts and ethos to leave no trace.
but it also might not be that worst case as it is really understudied, something to keep an eye on. it is an interesting ecosystem and its good to be cognizant of it. but even if it failed to be preserved, it is strange how people act like this particular festival is so unique in that regard though, although I think its principles and expense ask for criticism.
... do they though?
"Ah, but in your 'leave no trace' ethos, you forgot to consider the atmosphere! Ha HA! Checkmate!"
"And your radical inclusion principles mean that you have to put up with billionaires at your big counterculture party!"
It's just a bizarre attitude. "How dare you try and make things better if you fail do them perfectly?"
Meanwhile no one would bat an eye at a monster truck rally or whatever.
I realize I'm pissing into the wind here but it's weird how readily people will find reasons not to like a thing if they've already decided not to like it.
Standard internet purity testing these days, really.
irony is funny, I like burning man, we can still acknowledge the surrounding deficiencies
they could drop half of the culty principles and just focus on the art festival, city creation, and the prevalence of theme camps, and 90% of the criticism would evaporate
In any case I don't think the criticism is generally as well-founded as what you've laid out here. In fact I'm pretty sure that most casual observers do not realize that the exclusivity in practice stems from inclusivity in principle.
Also the median income of participants was around $70k last I checked, so also the perception is pretty out of whack.
> https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/burning-man-demo....
not specifically about median but over 40% report $100k-$299k, 30% below that. And even if it was $70k, for an individual that's really much higher than the national, as the national household income is $70k which is for a family of 4, taking anybody's $70k income and dividing that up for more budgeting constraints.
the perception isn't out of whack, based on that quip. its fine that some people save up for that one event, its also a place of privilege that self selects who would participate despite the intention and difficulty necessary to do so, extremely ironic for the 1 festival (or whatever word that doesn't trigger burners) that leads with how inclusive it is, when its actually not more inclusive than corporate festivals, and actually pretty hard to tap into an existing camp, and more challenging to make your own new camp. If they dropped some of those cringy principles it would be less of a target.
https://blackrockcitycensus.org/sociodemo#demographics
24.3% make more than $150k
And of course participants make more than the national average. There's a huge proportion of attendees coming from the SF Bay Area (38.1% from California -- Burning Man started on Baker Beach in SF), where $150k is not particularly high. Besides that, the poorest Americans simply cannot afford to attend festivals. That doesn't have anything to do with Burning Man.
Inclusivity means "everyone is welcome", it doesn't imply that you can afford the trip or time away from work. Even if the event tickets were $0, that would be the case. The org does offer reduced cost tickets to people with financial need, which is pretty much the limit of what can be done in practice. How is that ironic?
Anyway: if Burning Man is associated with rich, privileged people in the popular imagination and, say, High Sierra Music Festival is not, then yes, that's out of whack.
And I'm doubtful that many Americans think of even $300k as "rich"? Comfortable, yes; but not upper-class (Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren make more than that). That kind of income usually comes from a salary, i.e., people in that income range still have to work. Generally the current focus of public scorn is billionaires or at least multi-millionaires, who are many orders of magnitude beyond.
- travel to and from
- consumables and their transport
- air conditioning onsite
- burning things
If you start segmenting the set of people along all possible dimensions in order to find "local outliers", then eventually, everyone will become an outlier in one of the sets.
I think it's reasonable to say that everyone should do as well as they can, and if everyone does that, the average person will have an impact.
- Environmental impact of roundtrip transportation to the middle of nowhere
- Environmental impact of structures and vehicles
- Environmental impact of burning large amounts of crap
- Environmental impact of littering
- Environmental impact of event-specific clothes, garments, accessories, etc.
- Encouraging others to engage into the activities above
- ...
Do you honestly believe that a person that voluntarily engages into all this pollution cares in any way about the environment? They're people living in a bubble, completely detached from reality.
In just 9 days, Burning Man pollutions as much as 19,000 families for an entire year.
Roundtrip transportation to “the middle of nowhere” is no worse than rounddtrip transportation to somewhere. The only difference is that “somewhere” is sometimes accessible by train… but in the US, that’s only a small percentage of the country.
Ymmv, there are 70k people and there’s a lot of variation.
The emissions in 2020 were estimated at 100,000 tons CO2, which is roughly equivalent to five hours of air travel (2.5 hours each way) per participant. The lion's share of emissions are from road travel and air travel.
To their credit, the org is trying to green the event (and has been issuing very thorough reports on emissions), but it's difficult when the majority of emissions is due to off-playa transportation.
Moreover, it's an incredibly difficult environment, and not really one where you'd prefer to depend on less-reliable renewables. If you'd opted for solar this year, you'd probably have been wet and dark.
What you should perhaps sit with is: should we be similarly outraged about the climate footprint of tech conferences, or is it just easy to hate Burning Man in particular?
It was a mistake.
Same with every international conference that could happen online. Just gather online.
Meanwhile, I assume you're a vegan who bikes to work and never uses air conditioning? The difference between just one month of living like the average American and one month of living like the average Indian is significantly greater than the footprint of attending Burning Man.
It's absolutely possible for someone to attend Burning Man annually and still weigh in below the average emissions per capita, or even to be carbon negative.
We are all going to have to make sacrifices, but we aren't going to have to sacrifice everything, either.
Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.
The only way we can have a chance (we really don't, but let's entertain the idea) is to have every person reduce their environmental footprint as much as possible.
The other alternative is the elites replacing the masses with AI, and use autonomous means to capture all resources.
You know what they say about extraordinary claims…
Yes, even more so.
You care so much about the environment, calculate how many Burning Mans that equates to.