A Deep Green View of Burning Man 2007
Matthew Taylor of PeacePower Magazine has an in-depth and comprehensive look at how green the burn was this past year:
Can ‘Burning Man’ Become a Model for Green Living?
Thankfully, he looks at both the pro and con realities of issues with smart interviews on both sides such as use of biofuel generators, algae CO2 processing, gasification, future directions, and more. Here are a few clips:
Solar
This year, Burning Man LLC (“the LLC”) worked with a team of Berkeley engineers from The Shipyard to install a 30-kilowatt solar photovoltaic (PV) array in the shape of the Native, sacred Zia Sun symbol.
Biofuel
About 85 percent of the LLC’s generators were powered by biodiesel this year. According to Price, “We took [out] 11,000 gallons [of petroleum] that were coming from human rights hotspots like Saudi Arabia and Nigeria and instead we’re running it off french fry juice from Reno — thanks, Reno!”
Gasification
…a vehicle [like the Mechabolic] can run on almost any organic material, such as walnut shells or coffee grounds. [Tom] Price sees gasification as the world’s best hope to stop global warming and envisions a future when humans strip-mine landfills for fuel. Mason has made all of his gasification tinkering available to the world for free — open source — which befuddles the investment community.
Plastic
Every year, burners haul hundreds of thousands of plastic water bottles to the playa — everyone is responsible for his or her own hydration. However, is this particular manifestation of “radical self-reliance” (a stated core tenet of the event) compatible with Burning Man’s efforts to go green?
Carbon Offsets
“The opportunity is to be strategic and fact-based in how you use the offsets. … If every burner invested in .7 tons of carbon offsets, we’d be the first carbon-neutral city on the planet. If every burner invested in one ton, we’d be carbon negative,” Shearer claimed. Cooling Man reports that it helped to offset 780 out of the 33,250 estimated tons of greenhouse gas emissions generated by Burning Man 2007.
Greener Pastures
Water Woman founder and creator Ray Cirino, a twelve-time burner, talks about how different his baby will be from life on the playa. “Instead of building a city and tearing it down or destroying it, we’re going to keep the city. Burning Man says leave no trace — every single drop of ‘trace’ we’re going to be recycling or composting.”
