Greens set out to monitor Burning Man festival

[T_i_B]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/09/02/wburn02.xml

A counter-culture arts festival which champions alternative living is being vetted by environmentalists for its contribution to global warming. Burning Man bans the sale of anything but ice and coffee and declares clothing optional. The festival, which is expected to draw nearly 40,000 people to the Nevada desert this week, is described as an "experiment in temporary community dedicated to radical self-expression and radical self-reliance".

It has few rules, no structure and features performances, installation art and music, which culminate in the symbolic burning of a large wooden man. A group of San Francisco scientists, calling themselves Cooling Man, have launched a project to calculate how much greenhouse gas is produced by all the camper vans, private planes, flaming temples and fire eaters that descend for a week on the Black Rock Desert, 100 miles north of Reno.

Their website enables "burners", as festival participants are known, to calculate how much greenhouse gas they are creating and encourages them to offset emissions by planting trees, investing in renewable energy and buying greenhouse gas "credits". Just the construction, transportation and burning of the 40ft, 38-ton wood and neon man releases 114 tons of greenhouse gases, the team estimates.

The aim is to make the festival "climate positive" by more than offsetting the total emissions.

[Judi Lynn]

1. If you can get Current TV, you can see live programming from the place

tonight.

Here's the site:

http://www.current.tv/network/pods/tvfreeburningman/PD04218

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It's good to see someone has spoken to them about that pollution! Without a doubt they can create a suitable replacement for the fire festivities which wouldn't screw things up even more.

Thanks for the information.

[OKthatsIT]

10. DONT BE STUPID..this is another 'Globalist' psyops

The burning man is made of straw...it burns up in 10 mins. This is a means of dividing the environmental movement from all Pagan groups.

To make Pagans look like hypocrites...to allow the Globalists to breakdown American 'tolerance' for alternative religions.

It's ridiculous.

DON'T BE STUPID AND FALL FOR THIS CRAP!

[TheWatcher]

12. I'd love to view the world through the eyes of the drugs you are on

Render unto me a fucking break.

I have a whole community of friends up here in Seattle that attend this every year, and have been involved with that community for many years now.

It's NOTHING like you describe.

My suspicions are you have never been to the festival, and are thus utterly ignorant of it or anything that goes on there.

Most ridiculous post of the day.

Pure vitriol and baseless assertion. Nothing more.

[Tellurian]

14. You might be half right..

There may be covert nefarious individuals posing as environmentalist going along with the group simply to take names for future terrorist cross referencing.

After watching the TV Free video, these people look to be harmless, setting up voting booths parodying the forthcoming election. Your choice is limited to 1 of 2 options. HOPE or Fear. This simplistic approach is geared to provoke serious thought about the our country's current state of affairs. One example used is: have we evolved or devolved as a country when fear/hope is equated to not taking after shave lotion on an airplane. <funny as hell, though>

Worth watching!!

[ClintonTyree]

2. My hope is.........

that I'll be able to attend the Burning Man Festival before I shuffle off this mortal coil. My fear is that I will not be able to. :shrug: Oh well, it's on my "to do" list anyway.

[Vinnie From Indy]

4. It truly is something to see!!!

I took a year off from Burning Man this year to hike the Sierras near Yosemite instead. I will be back next year.

I invite all DUer's to come by and visit my camp. We have about 60-70 people that come in all from all over the US and the world to be part of the Garage Mahal tribe.

The Man burns TONIGHT!!!!


Good luck and I hope you make it out there!!!

[ixion]

3. Way to alienate people who might otherwise support your platform, Greens

:eyes:

I'm all for protecting the environment. But the Burning Man festival doesn't seem like the best protest spot, IMO.

[MadHound]

7. LOL, touchy aren't we!

It's OK to demand that others give up SUVs, long commutes and other fuel consuming, pollution causing activities, but damn them all to hell when the Greens decide to investigate how much fuel is being consumed and how much pollution is being generated at a festival dedicated to serious partying and pyromania:rofl:

Sorry friend, we all have to make a sacrifice. I imagine that driving all those vehicles into the middle of nowhere consumes quite a bit of fuel, not to mention the pollutants released, especially by the various pyrotechnic displays. Personally, I would like to know what the numbers are, and I find it very funny that those who normally would be most supportive about finding out this sort of info are all up in arms simply because it is one of "their" yearly activities.

[ixion]

8. okay, well, I've never been to a Burning Man festival, so it is not one

of my yearly activities.

I think getting all worked up over a fire is a little much, that's all. ;-)

[MadHound]

9. Well, I can see why the Greens are interested in this

Given that you've got 40,000 people traveling miles out into the middle of nowhere for a gathering, that's bound to leave a pretty good footprint, ecologically speaking. Now given that these people are sparking up some pretty serious fires for a number of days, that adds to the size of the footprint even more. Think of it in terms of your normal college football day, lots of tailgating, fuel consumed to get there, fuel consumed during the day. Now multiply that by seven days, and you can see the problem.

Mind you, I'm not saying that these people are your ordinary football spectators. It is mandatory that everybody clean up after themselves, and most burners are green conscience. Still and all, there is a lot of fuel consumed and greenhouse gasses given off. However, if anything I think that this assessment can actually be a positive thing, and instead of shutting Burning Man down, it will just encourage it to be greener.

[Kailassa]

13. They are monitoring, not protesting.

Since when was information and advice on mitigating harm a bad thing?

I expect they'll be cool folk who will thoroughly enjoy the festival themselves.

[donsu]

5. stop driving cars one day a wk. would do more to stop global warming

nt

[DumpDavisHogg]

6. They should offset the emissions by banning SUV's

I mean banning SUV's nationwide, not just at Burning Man.

[Taoschick]

16. And I guess

Those of us who live in rural areas and require 4wd vehicles can just move to the city?

[Withywindle]

11. I went to Burning Man once, six years ago.

Pretty amazing experience.

I think the Greens are in some way preaching to the choir here--I don't think you're going to find a lot of anti-environmental-protection right-wingers there! Some people will probably appreciate the information and others'll be really annoyed; that's how it goes.

The thing is, though, the organizers DO work damn hard to keep the environmental footprint as minimal as possible. There's a huge effort devoted to that. And while driving out there does produce a fair amount of emissions, I'll bet the rate of carpooling is way above average; I don't know anyone who goes out there alone! And you're actually *not* allowed to drive your vehicle once you've parked it at your campsite, unless it's an art car. So I'll bet everyone there does a lot *less* driving during that week than they would if they were at home.

[Tellurian]

15. ^5

cute and copy catting..