Witnessing Climate Change Over the Desert Southwest: How Burning Man Organizers Can’t Organize a Grand Opening Event in Nevada
It’s not just the trash they have to pick up. They basically need to smooth out all of those tracks,” Donnelly explained.
It’s the Burning Man organizers who are still on site that he said will have to deal with the accumulating effects of the extreme weather over the landscape. Part of their permit from the state stipulates that they leave no trace of their activities on the land.
The recent flooding will actually bring to life a vibrant ecosystem of invertebrates that live as desiccated eggs under the surface of the desert, waiting to become hydrated so they can hatch.
As the Earth warms, precipitation that does fall in the arid Southwest will tend to come in large bouts, according to the latest national climate assessment. When a lot of rain falls in a short time, the ground can’t absorb the water quick enough and that leads to floods.
The season typically runs from June to September and is characterized by monsoonal activity. “But what’s unusual is for a slow moving storm to park overhead and dump a whole inch of rain at once, like it did over the [Black Rock Desert Playa].”
In Death Valley he saw a series of extreme climate changes across the desert southwest in the summer. During July, portions of Death Valley National Park nearly beat the all-time world heat record with temperatures reaching 129 degrees F. When Tropical Storm Hilary hit late last month, the deluge reshaped the desert landscape. The storm also made a rare foray into southern Nevada, setting records there as well. The mountains west of Las Vegas got 9 inches of rain.
You can’t attribute the event to climate change. But we are seeing impacts and extreme weather all over the place now … He told NPR that people could make their own decisions about how to observe the climate change in front of them.
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Donnelly is the Great Basin director at the Center for Biological Diversity, an advocacy group that promotes conservation and fights to stop the extinction and climate crises across public lands in Nevada, Utah and California.
One could argue that the protesters, whose efforts ahead of the festival were met with ridicule and ire by their fellow partiers, were right. Patrick is the one that does.
The second was caused by people trying to leave the pop-up city because of intense rain, which is becoming more typical in a warming climate.
The first tangle of gridlock was caused by a coalition of activists protesting the alleged complacency among festivalgoers, known as “burners,” over the global climate crisis that they argue must be addressed by systemic change beyond the boundaries of the Black Rock desert where the festival is held.
As Burning Man approached this year, the usual mad scramble to find tickets was absent. Instead, the opposite occurred: There was a mad scramble to sell them.
But it also might hit the reset button on the event. In the past five years, Burning Man has gained a reputation for being a playground for billionaires and influencers, filled with luxury RVs and private, air-conditioned domes with open bars. This latest wallop could pull it back from the brink of full Coachella-fication and into its radical, community-focused roots.
The Burning Man takes place in the Black Rock Desert in Nevada for three hours on Labor Day. It’s a place of extremes: extreme temperatures, extreme dust storms, and an extreme lack of water.
Other reasons: It felt distasteful to do something so reliant on diesel during a climate crisis. People understandably wanted to take the $5,000-plus dollars they’d normally lay out for travel and supplies and spend it on a vacation to Europe instead of on Mad Max cosplay. People decided to take a year off because they were tired from the 2022. Burn and seeing the double RV prices, they decided to take a year off.
The layoffs in the tech industry have hurt the target market for Burning Man. A satirical Medium article spoke of a Sparkle Pony Recession, in which pretty (mostly female) influencers were unable to find wealthy sponsors to fly them in and put them up in luxury RVs. Camps that usually aimed for 80 percent returning members had to take in around 70 percent newbies to fill their roster.
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Those who weren’t able to get a ticket in the initial sale had to find a spare one, and work with their connections to do so. With the regular price of $575 tickets vanishingly rare, some people threw in $2,750 for a spot. There were a lot of tickets for less than face value on social media this summer.