Burning Man gets in touch with its environmental side

"Green" is not the first word one might choose to describe Black Rock City, the home of the counterculture adventure known as Burning Man.

Black Rock City, which officially exists for just one week a year, lies in the vast Black Rock Desert of northern Nevada, 180 miles northeast of Sacramento. That desert -- known to its many admirers as the playa -- is roughly 1,000 square miles of nothing; nothing very green, anyway. Just endless miles of a powder-fine dust.

But one week a year, during Burning Man, which starts on Sunday at midnight and runs through Labor Day, the empty playa explodes with light and sound. Burning Man's credo of "radical self-expression" leads its citizens (39,100 last year, more expected this year) to extravagant displays of wanton creativity; it culminates in the equally wanton destruction of much of that art -- by fire.

The requirements of surviving for a week in a vast wasteland led "Burners" to develop efficient ways to use water, food and energy. But in most respects, Burning Man is vastly, riotously profligate. From the high costs of getting there (people come from around the world) and making a comfortable (and preferably, wildly thematic) camp, to creating extravagant costumes, fire-breathing art cars, and other outrageous works of art and feats of engineering, Burning Man isn't conservative in any sense of the word.

Which is why this year's theme -- "The Green Man" -- caught some off guard.

"I've heard people say, 'It's Burning Man, not Composting Dude'," admits Tom Price, an environmental journalist and 11-year Burner who is the environmental manager for this year's event. And this year, the environment is the focus of the event, from the theme art to the many efforts at conservation and recycling that are being undertaken to compensate for what is estimated to be the event's 27,000-ton "carbon footprint" -- an estimate of the amount of carbon dioxide put into the atmosphere through fuel consumption in its many forms.

(By comparison, the carbon footprint of the 2006 Berlin World Cup soccerfinals was estimated to have been 100,000 metric tons. According to the United Nations' latest figures from 2002, the average person in the developed world emits 9.7 metric tons of carbon per year (a metric ton is 10 per cent larger than a U.S. standard ton).

Price says Burning Man's greatest carbon impact is actually not in blowing things up and burning art, but in participants flying and driving from all over the country to the desert.

Price can tick off dozens of changes being made this year in the pursuit of reducing the event's environmental impact: creation of a new fleet of 1,000 free community bikes (once there, most Burners travel the expansive city on bikes); the changeover of all city generators from diesel to biodiesel; efforts to recycle wood used in building the city (last year six tractor-trailers full of recycled lumber went to Reno's Habitat for Humanity); an arrangement with the Albertsons grocery chain to provide seven 24-hour recycling centers for Burners leaving the playa.

Albertsons? Habitat for Humanity? What do those organizations, from what Burners half-jokingly refer to as "the default world," have to do with Burning Man? A lot, says Price. Especially this year.

"It's a very different kind of Burning Man," he says. "It has an outward focus; it's the first theme that's had real-world implications."

In the past, Burning Man's annual themes have been designed by founder Larry Harvey to evoke a wide variety of creative responses. For instance, 2002's "The Floating World" theme brought forth everything from schools of electric jellyfish (on bikes) to the 40-foot-long, self-propelled, two-masted wooden Spanish galleon, La Contessa. Other recent themes include "Psyche" and "Beyond Belief."

But Burning Man's dominant aesthetic, if it has one, is a hard-core, "Mad Max"-style anarchy, where art burns, explosions go off for their own sake, and hundreds of fire dancers spin flaming poi, leaving vast clouds of smoke in their wake.

About the writer:

• The Bee's David Watts Barton can be reached at (916) 321-1154 or dbarton@sacbee.com.