How the ultra-wealthy infiltrated anti-capitalist Burning Man

Story by By Allison Morrow, CNN •10h

Burning Man, the desert confab that descended into chaos over the weekend, isn’t quite the scrappy, free-spirited revelry that it once was.

For many watching the disarray of Burning Man from afar, the rain and mud that left 70,000 people stranded quickly became a symbol of the festival’s departure from its roots.

Or, more simply: how the billionaires ruined Burning Man.

The festival began as a small gathering in 1986 on a San Francisco beach, and eventually grew into a gritty countercultural community of “Burners” who eschew commercialism within their makeshift city, erected annually in a desiccated lake bed known as the playa.

There’s no money trading hands on the playa — that’s core to to the community’s “decommodification” ethos. But there is, increasingly, a lot of money on the playa.

Going to Burning Man is, in some elite circles, akin to having climbed Everest or taken ayuhuasca on a meditation retreat — a spiritually transformative experience, undertaken with a considerable safety net of privilege.

Elon Musk, the world’s wealthiest person, has been a regular at Burning Man, telling Recode in 2014 that “if you haven’t been, you just don’t get it.” Mark Zuckerberg flew in for a day in 2012 to serve up grilled cheese sandwiches and even set up his own tent, according to his friend and Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz. In 2018, shortly after she was indicted on federal fraud charges, Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes retreated to the desert and burned an effigy for her failed startup, she told the New York Times.

One of the 10 pillars of Burning Man is “radical self-reliance,” and in that spirit most revelers haul their own water and shelf-stable food in for the week, and “rely on their inner resources” for survival, according to the organization’s website.

For the one-percenters in attendance, however, self-reliance can be outsourced.

The ultra-wealthy have been known to fly in personal chefs for the week, and pay as much as $50,000 to camp in luxurious tents, as the New York Post reported in 2019. A Business Insider reporter, similarly, wrote about so-called fancy camps around the playa that came with chandeliers, party rooms and outdoor showers.

“Burning Man is the perfect example of how many rich White people recreationally manufacture hardship because they are immune from it systematically,” wrote one user on X, formerly Twitter, this weekend.

The infiltration of the jet set is the driving force behind the schadenfreude emanating from social media in response to video footage of Burners — some of whom paid $2,750 for a single ticket — tromping through ankle-deep mud, unable to drive out of the camp following unusually heavy rain.

“It’s a tiny violin emoji for me,” wrote one TikTok user.

While some festival-goers found the situation scary — a “Lord of the Flies” vibe, as one attendee described it — many seasoned Burners were taking the weather and road closures in stride, offering food and shelter to those who need it. While one person died at the festival, the death was “unrelated to the weather.”

One attendee, Andrew Hyde, told CNN the rain and mud have taken the meaning of the event back to its roots.

“You come out here to be in a harsh climate, and you prepare for that.”

— Nouran Salahieh and Holly Yan contributed to this article.


Burning Man costs most people a minimum of $800 for just a ticket and a parking spot. All the other expenses can easily push the total cost into the thousands.

Story by sjackson@insider.com (Sarah Jackson) •8h

Nevada's nine-day Burning Man festival can cost Burners hundreds, and sometimes thousands, of dollars to attend. JULIE JAMMOT/Getty Images© Provided by Business Insider
Burning Man may be "decommodified" but it's still pretty expensive to attend.
The 9-day festival cost most Burners at least $800 this year, just for a ticket and a vehicle pass.
Transportation, food, and other survival-related supplies can easily push the cost into the thousands.


1 of 9 Photos in Gallery©Maxar Technologies/Handout via REUTERS
See the mass exodus of vehicles inching through the Nevada desert as people clamor to escape Burning Man's soggy Black Rock City playa
Burning Man 2023's Exodus — when all its attendees depart — officially began on Monday.
Festivalgoers had been trapped as desert roads became waterlogged from torrential rains.
Photos show hundreds of vehicles making their escape from muddy festival as it draws to a close.

Festivalgoers could finally depart Burning Man on Monday after being trapped for days by heavy rains that swamped event's makeshift desert town in thick mud.

The nine-day party event turned into a soggy disaster when a downpour turned the desert into a massive mud pit. Attendees were told to hunker down and ration food and water, and organizers rebooted their guidelines page, called a "survival guide," into a "Wet Playa Survival Guide."

A driving ban was lifted at 2 p.m. Pacific Time on Monday as roads out of the festival site began to dry, allowing a remaining 64,000 attendees to leave.

Hundreds of trucks, buses, and other vehicles poured out of Black Rock City on Monday, with attendees being asked to consider postponing their exit to avoid a traffic build-up.

Here's a look at the exodus from Burning Man 2023 as the beleaguered event draws to a close.See More


Burning Man only sells ice on site, but don't let that fool you: Burners still shell out a small fortune to be there.

The typically nine-day event in Nevada's Black Rock Desert, roughly 120 miles north of Reno, draws tens of thousands of attendees each year, and sets them all back at least $630 for a ticket including its taxes and fee — with total costs easily ballooning into the thousands.

The survival supplies aren't anything to scoff at either. This year, a storm put a damper on the festivities, turning much of the famous playa into mud and resulting in stranded attendees.

Here's a closer look at the expenses you're on the hook for as a Burner.

Tickets alone aren't cheap

Most tickets sold directly from Burning Man cost $575 each this year, according to the event's website. (There are 5,000 tickets available at a discounted $225 for people with financial hardships, and "FOMO" tickets priced at $1,500 and $2,750 for Burners who want to secure their spots two months before the main sale opens.) Vehicle passes, which are required for every vehicle driving into Black Rock City, cost $150 each; for Burners who qualified for discounted rates due to financial hardships, vehicle passes are $75 each.

All tickets are subject to the 9% Nevada Live Entertainment Tax; on the $575 tickets, this tax comes out $51.75 each. Both tickets and vehicle passes are subject to a $4 fee each. There's also a 3.4% credit card processing fee on purchase subtotals.

All told, this means Burners are shelling out at least $800 between tickets, vehicle passes, fees, and taxes if they're attending solo. Lots of people carpool, however, which means you can share the cost of the vehicle pass, but the ticket and its taxes and fees alone will set you back around $630.

Transportation and lodging can easily cost thousands

Lots of Burning Man attendees opt for an RV — which can be costly to rent. Matt Mills McKnight/REUTERS© Matt Mills McKnight/REUTERS

Don't forget you have to actually get to the playa. And you also have to figure out where you're going to sleep for 9 days.

CNN

Huge exodus of people getting out of the Burning Man festival in Nevada.

Duration 0:37  View on Watch

Related video: Man stuck at Burning Man tells Channel 13 about festival conditions (KTNV Las Vegas, NV)

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The Wall Street Journal Burning Man Revelers Describe ‘Disaster Like Never Been Seen’

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NBC News  Burning Man attendees makes the best of muddy festival: ‘The best burn ever!’

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Daily Mail  Enormous lines of Burning Man attendees make painfully slow departure

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Burners coming from other parts of the country will likely have to cover airfare or the cost of other transportation to Reno, and then take additional transportation from the Reno airport to Black Rock City. Some attendees of the festival, which is popular with influencers and the wealthy tech elite, even fly in on private jets, which were the subject of protests at this year's Burning Man.

Once you've arrived, there's also the matter of food, water, and lodging. One Burning Man veteran recommends budgeting $10 a day for food, water, and supplies when cooked in a communal kitchen for a group, which would come out to another $90. In keeping with the festival's emphasis on "radical self-reliance," Burners should also be budgeting for supplies like shade structures, sleeping gear, and toiletries. A list of recommended survival supplies on Burning Man's website could easily add up to $100 or more.


A screenshot from Burning Man's website of items "you should probably bring." Burning Man© Burning Man

As for lodging, many people pitch tents, rent RVs, or even stay in yurts.

RV rentals can easily set you back thousands of dollars: Multiple RV rental websites estimate even a basic rental will cost anywhere between $5,500 and $7,000, and if you're staying with other attendees, the biggest RVs start at around $10,000.



Yurts at a past Burning Man. Aly Weisman/Business Insider© Aly Weisman/Business InsiderOne website advertising yurts for Burning Man lists structures ranging in price from $3,000 to $11,500. Many attendees often camp together, sometimes paying a hefty price to do so: One luxury camp infamously charged up to $100,000 for accommodations, private chef included, before Burning Man shut it down.

Smaller, optional expenses can add up

Black Rock City, the temporary city constructed once a year, is enormous and can take a while to traverse by foot — so many people opt to bring or rent a bicycle to get around, as driving is prohibited on the playa except when arriving or departing the festival. Burning Man's approved bike shops offer rentals from $80 to $125 and up for the duration of the festival.

Then, there's also the freewheeling fashion of Burning Man. Another one of the festival's central tenets is self-expression, and attendees are known to sport flamboyant outfits and costumes, with people dressing up in steampunk or sci-fi outfits. It's entirely optional and you can always cobble together something unique from what you already own, but if you're starting from scratch or want a more elaborate costume, it's yet another expense to consider.

The Burning Man disaster is ‘a teachable moment’ about climate change

Story by Dino Grandoni, Kim Bellware •
The Washington Post
Burning Man Topper

Burning Man is supposed to arrive and disappear like the desert breeze.

Near the end of every summer, attendees of the multiday mega-festival venture to the Nevada wilderness. Their motto: “Leave no trace.”

This year, thousands got stuck in the mud instead after about a half an inch of rain hit what is normally the driest state in the nation. Instead of leaving no trace, many self-described “burners” abandoned bicycles and vehicles on the drenched, muddy Black Rock Desert.

Once an underground carnival for free spirits, Burning Man today is famous as a party spot for Hollywood stars, Silicon Valley tech bros and other jet-set elites. The latest event offers a glimpse at how extreme weather can — and more frequently will — dramatically transform the environment in a moment’s notice.


The Burning Man disaster is ‘a teachable moment’ about climate change

“It’s a teachable moment, as far as climate disasters and extreme weather” go, said Anya Kamenetz, a Burning Man attendee forced to flee the festival. “This is very much just a trial run under really, really easy conditions for what a lot of people go through.”

No single storm can be attributed to climate change. But flooding in Nevada is expected to become more frequent as storms intensify and snow shifts to rain due to higher temperatures, according to state officials.

On Aug. 27, as the festival was getting started, climate activists blockaded a road into Burning Man in protest of its environmental footprint.

This year’s event is only expected to fuel critics who have long charged the festival for leaving trash in surrounding communities and not living up to its eco-conscious goals as crowds rush away from the encampment. As festivalgoers made the long trek to the exits, they left more behind than usual, including cars, Pershing County Sheriff Jerry Allen said.

“This behavior definitely does not fall within the 10 principles of Burning Man,” he said. The neglect, he added, is “a societal issue” and not necessarily the fault of the Burning Man Project, the group behind the festival.

Burning Man gets rained out

At first, a sprinkling of rain helped settle some of the dust swirling through the encampment. But by Friday evening, the rain didn’t stop — and it didn’t take much precipitation to turn the playa into a muddy mess.

“By the time we went to bed that night, it was really clear that this is going to be something that would shut down the city,” said Kamenetz, who writes a Substack newsletter about climate change.

By Saturday morning, the burners were trapped. Those who remained held a camp meeting, Kamenetz said. No more showers, no more dishwashing. No more portable toilet use except for solid waste.

Unsure of when attendees would be able to leave, organizers urged those who remained to conserve food, water and fuel. The gates and airport in and out of what was supposed to be a desert oasis were closed.

So, burners sheltered in place. Festivalgoers covered their tents in tarps to keep the rain out. The mud was so thick and sticky that many abandoned their hiking boots, trekking through the encampment barefoot or slipping plastic bags over their socks.

To dig mud out of a portable toilet, Kamenetz unbolted a gold-colored decorative shovel attached to a zebra-striped, safari-themed vehicle brought to Burning Man as an “art car.”

“It was gold,” she said of the shovel. “It’s not gold anymore.”


Sept. 3 | Black Rock City, Nev. A portable toilet covered in mud.

© Instagram @martinposc/Reuters

Revelers tried to make the best out of a bad situation. During the day, the group sculpted a statue of an elephant out of mud. At night, they played music. As a sign, perhaps, that things would be okay, a rainbow arched across the playa Saturday.

“People really didn’t miss a beat,” Kamenetz said.

‘Better prepared than the average Joe Schmo’

This year’s Burning Man brought some of the most extreme weather Christine Lee had seen in the eight years she’s attended the festival.

But many burners, particularly veterans of the festival, are resourceful and well-prepared for the week-plus of off-the-grid survival, said the 39-year-old circus performer. Lee traveled with friends in a built-out conversion van, so they were equipped with heat, air conditioning and power — as well as stacks upon stacks of foil-wrapped packs of tuna.

“I did have enough tuna for an extra week,” Lee said. While there were moments of panic over the sight of overflowing toilets and calls to reserve food and water, people coming to Burning Man follow the principles of self-reliance and community, she said.

“They’re going to be prepared better than the average Joe Schmo,” Lee added.

The social contract Burning Man is known for largely held up, though Lee noticed human waste outside one trailer, and more forks and litter — sights she hadn’t seen in past year. Lee chalked it up to a small percent of attendees behaving selfishly.

The broader community stepped up to clean the grounds and shelter, and to feed burners who were struggling as resources dwindled, she said. Burning Man is famously “commerce-free” — or at least strives to be — which means everything including meals and bicycle repair is barter and community-based.

“It totally worked — there’s nowhere else I’d rather be in the middle of a zombie apocalypse,” Lee said. “I’d see people walking around with trash bags, offering water, handing out food. You see someone clearly struggling because they look hungry and doesn’t have a poncho and you help them.”

The rain arrived as Reno, the largest nearby city, is in the middle of its second-wettest year on record, according to Scott McGuire, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service.

The area has entered a “boom-or-bust” mode when it comes to rain, oscillating between wet and drought years. “We swing on this pendulum,” McGuire said.

Rainstorms like the one over Labor Day weekend are unusual but not unprecedented for the region, he added.

The Southwest United States has seen more rain than normal this year, both because of an active monsoon as well as the passage of Tropical Storm Hilary. Around the same time downpours drenched Burning Man, torrential rain also brought flooding to Las Vegas, which has received 2.55 inches of rain during the monsoon season, the 11th-most on record.

On Friday, the Weather Service’s forecast had predicted isolated thunderstorms and scattered showers for the area over the weekend.
A muddy exodus

Burning Man Project chief executive Marian Goodell told NBC News that the group was “prepared for the whole spectrum” of weather scenarios.

“We’ve chosen a dry lake bed” for the event, she said. “The environment is always a survival environment.”

Yet by Sunday, an exodus was underway even as roads remained closed. Over Labor Day, people pushed RVs and kicked mud out from under wheels to get them to move. Others hoofed it by foot. Kamenetz walked more than three miles through mud to catch a bus.

Every year, large piles of trash are left in Reno and other spots outside the desert, said Allen, the Pershing County sheriff.

“This year is a little different in that there are numerous vehicles strewn all throughout the playa for several miles,” he added. “Some participants were unwilling to wait or use the beaten path to attempt to leave the desert and have had to abandon their vehicles and personal property wherever their vehicle came to rest.”

The Burning Man Project, Allen added, is responsible for cleaning up the trash in the desert. The project did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Washington Post.

By Tuesday morning, the departure was “going smoothly” despite the heavy volume of travelers, Pershing County Sheriff Sgt. Nathan Carmichael said. The only major incident from Burning Man that the sheriff’s office was actively investigating Monday was the death of Leon Reece, a 32-year-old attendee who was found unresponsive at the festival Friday.

At the Reno-Tahoe International Airport, operations were returning to “business as usual” after a double dose of traffic from Labor Day travelers and the influx of burners headed home, according to spokesperson Stacey Sunday.

The airport on Monday tallied around 7,000 passengers, Sunday said, citing TSA data — compared with 4,000 to 6,000 travelers on a typical day.

Among the ways airport officials typically prepare for Burning Man travelers is to have plastic bags on hand to wrap their dust-covered luggage so that baggage machines don’t get clogged. This year, the airport provided travelers with disposable booties to cover their mud-caked shoes.

“[It’s] our biggest thing because there’s construction going outside, there isn’t the curb for burners to sit on, make flight arrangements,” Sunday said. “They’re either inside or out, but it doesn’t seem to be a big deal.”

This year’s experience hasn’t deterred Lee from Burning Man, though she plans to pack more boots and ponchos in case of rough weather next year. Even the hard rain, she said, created a joyful, art-filled memory. During a brief period when the rain slowed this past weekend, people started walking the streets and creating mud art: clay Minions and Buddhas and snowmen.

But Kamenetz, a nine-time attendee, said this would be her last Burning Man, a decision she had considered even before the rain.

“Is this really how I want to be spending my leisure time?”

Jason Samenow contributed to this report.

The Washington Post
Rain falls during Burning Man

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Burning Man mud after rainfall
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Burning Man attendees create mud statue
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Burning Man attendees become trapped in mud
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A Burning Man attendee and their costume in front of dozens of bikes on the playa. Aly Weisman/Business Insider© Aly Weisman/Business Insider

It's not mandatory, but since gift-giving is one of Burning Man's 10 core principles, it's common for attendees to also factor into their budgeting equations gifts to bring and share with one another.

Add it all up, and Burning Man can easily set you back at least $1,000 to $2,000 unless you've gotten really creative and figured out a way to pinch pennies and carpool — and even then you're looking at the high hundreds of dollars.

Let's just hope next year's Burners get more for their money than a giant mud pit.

PROFANE SANCTITY

The radical, irreverent and inclusive religion of Burning Man

'Perhaps our presence can give people the sense that religion doesn’t need to be as judgmental or scary or exclusionary as they might experience it,' said John Brett, who helps lead the Religious AF camp at Burning Man.

August 25, 2023

By 

Kathryn 

Post 

Milk + Honey Shabbat service and dinner during Burning Man at the Milk + Honey camp in Black Rock City, Nevada, on Friday, Sep 2, 2022. Photo © Marlena Sloss

(RNS) — Zvika Krieger never intended to go to rabbinical school. But each time he led the Burning Man Shabbat service, alongside hundreds of glittery, sweaty “burners,” dozens would line up to thank him. For some, it was their first religious service in decades.

“After doing this for so many years, I started thinking, this is the pinnacle of my year,” said Krieger, who left his role last year as a director at Facebook’s parent organization, Meta, to lead a Jewish spiritual community in Berkeley, California. “I feel like I’m really helping to nourish people who are not getting served elsewhere.”

Burning Man, the annual anarchic gathering in the salt flats of Black Rock Desert in northwestern Nevada and scheduled for Aug. 27 – Sept. 4, is often acclaimed for its hedonism and famed for its drug-taking and public nudity. But the event has always had its spiritual side: 10 guiding principles, a nondenominational temple and recurring burning rituals. And in recent years, religious groups have been carving out their own space on “the playa” — Burning Man’s public square — offering judgement-free, radically inclusive rituals that seem to grow more popular each year.   

Fourteen years ago, Milk + Honey, a Burning Man camp founded by Jewish members, hosted a 30-person Shabbat that has since ballooned to include 1,000 participants. Each year, the sea of attendees dressed in colorful attire enjoys traditional songs and prayers interwoven with secular music selections. Krieger’s sermon usually incorporates both references to the week’s Torah reading and to Burning Man’s orgy dome, and the service concludes with a massive Shabbat dinner, with wine and challah bread aplenty. 

Zvika Krieger, center right with microphone, speaks during the Milk + Honey camp Shabbat service during Burning Man in Black Rock City, Nevada, on Friday, Sep 2, 2022. Photo © Marlena Sloss

“Shabbat literally means to pause,” said Krieger. “So it’s an opportunity to press pause on the craziness of Burning Man, that 80,000-person thumping energy of the playa, and take a breath, relax, turn inward, reflect, feel nourished, feel connected and in community.”

Milk + Honey’s offerings are both sacred and profane. There’s the “bubby oracle,” a person dressed as a grandma who offers insights and postcards for writing to one’s grandmother. At the “Rituals R Us” pop-up, burners spin a wheel for their chance at scoring an impromptu (and unofficial) wedding, funeral, baptism, bat mitzvah or circumcision.

Another ritual is honored at a brunch where hot dogs take the place of lox. “We’re serving a bagel brunch, with all the fixings, and also hot dogs,” Krieger explained. “But if you want to have a hot dog, you have to get the hot dog circumcised. You have to snip the tip and put the tip in the tip jar.”

Milk + Honey camp Shabbat dinner at Burning Man in Black Rock City, Nevada, on Friday, Sep 2, 2022. Photo © Marlena Sloss

Mainline Protestantism has its own spiritual space in the Religious As F–k camp, founded by a group of Episcopalians. This year the group of 15-25 campers, mostly from Mainline denominations, will offer morning devotions called “For Christ’s Sake!,” talks on Jesus and psychedelics and “coffee and confession.”

“We will offer them absolution and their morning caffeine,” quipped John Brett, a chaplain in San Francisco’s night ministry serving queer folks and the unhoused community.

One of the highlights of the week for Brett is the group’s Ash Wednesday service, held at the nondenominational temple. Since Burning Man operates on its own clock, or the lack of one, Religious AF members don’t mind that its service comes months after Ash Wednesday on the church calendar, when Christians reflect on mortality.

Gathered beneath the wooden beams of the temple, where burners grieve, contemplate and leave offerings, Brett and other group members take ashes from the previous year’s burns and impose them on the foreheads of all who wish to participate.

Religious AF camp members and visitors hold an Ash Wednesday service at the Temple during Burning Man 2019 in Black Rock City, Nevada. Photo by Alex Leach

“Those who experienced religious trauma and spiritual abuse, who found their way to Burning Man and are on their own journey of meaning making, some discover us unaware that Christians might show up on the playa. Many fall into tears in our arms,” said Brett. “Perhaps our presence can give people the sense that religion doesn’t need to be as judgmental or scary or exclusionary as they might experience it in what burners call the ‘default world.’”

For Gabriel Serafini, founder of the Healing Footwash camp, negotiating if or how to bring religion to Burning Man took years. The Footwash camp was started by a group of Christian Scientists who brought a makeshift Christian Science reading room to the desert where they hosted Christian Science lectures. But soon after Serafini, who was raised in Christian Science, got involved in 2013, he suggested offering foot washings instead, to emulate Jesus’ act of service to his disciples in the New Testament.

Burners stop at the Healing Footwash camp during Burning Man in Black Rock City, Nevada. Photo courtesy Healing Footwash

The first year, the group lugged folding chairs, 55-gallon water barrels and a giant 60-by-40-foot  cruciform tent into the desert, washing about 30-40 people’s feet in all. Almost a decade later, Serafini estimated that with the help of other burners, they washed the feet of between 1,000-2,000 people.  

Though the group still hosts Wednesday testimony services with readings from Christian Science founder Mary Baker Eddy’s “Science and Health,” they now see the foot washing less as a religious service and more as an act of peacemaking.

“It doesn’t matter what your religious practices are, or if you believe in God. When somebody gives this as a gift, it’s special, it’s out of the ordinary,” said Serafini. “And it’s something that leads to an almost instant connection.”

---

According to David DeSteno, a professor of psychology at Northeastern University in Boston whose podcast “How God Works” explored the spirituality of Burning Man, religious groups’ radical acceptance could be one reason for their success at Burning Man.

Religious AF camp offers Communion during Burning Man 2022 in Black Rock City, Nevada. Photo by Alex Leach

“The people who are leaving religion, as we’re seeing in all the surveys out there, most of them aren’t becoming atheists,” said DeSteno. “They’re looking for new ways to be spiritual because the current institutions don’t speak to them anymore.”

DeSteno added that Burning Man has been shown to have transformational effects. In a 2022 study of 1,200 attendees of “secular” mass gatherings, including Burning Man, 63.2% reported being at least somewhat transformed by the experience, involving feelings of increased connection with something larger than oneself. In the weeks and months after an event, having a transformative experience was positively associated with generosity.

Though the study doesn’t explain why these transformations happen, DeSteno suggested it could be Burning Man’s creation of a liminal space where burners rely on each other to survive a harsh environment, like a kind of rite of passage.

John Brett at Burning Man 2022 in Black Rock City, Nevada. Photo by Annie Dunlap

“I think it’s those elements of intense experiences that we don’t get much in modern experiences of faith anymore, but that can really move people emotionally,” said DeSteno. “It creates a ritualistic environment where we really can shed our identity, take on new names and new clothes and be free to have our identity reshaped and understand our interdependence.”

For both Brett and Krieger, the religious nature of the rituals they offer are just one part of Burning Man’s spiritual landscape. Brett compared Burning Man to a pilgrimage — a place where global travelers gather for a divine encounter. For Krieger, whose faith is grounded in Jewish mysticism, God is everywhere at Burning Man: on the dance floor, under the stars, among the towering art pieces.

“To me, the real divinity of the event is about the space where people can be open hearted, where they can connect to others and be their true authentic selves, they can be vulnerable, and they can have these transformations,” said Krieger. “The whole event itself feels spiritual to me.”

It's Time to Rethink Burning Man

The climate crisis makes its presence known at the massive annual arts festival.

By Kimberley Mok

TREE HUGGER
Published September 8, 2023

Attendees gather to watch the burning of "The Chapel of Babel" during the Burning Man Festival in the early morning of September 5, 2023. 

AFP via Getty Images / Getty Images

The proverbial dust settled earlier this week after attendees at the annual Burning Man festival were finally given the green light to leave after torrential rains turned the event grounds into a muddy quagmire that prevented tens of thousands of people from driving out. Festival goers were told to conserve food and water until the ground dried sufficiently for cars, trucks, and RVs to drive on.

For some, this round of uncooperative weather may remain only an unfortunate footnote in the storied history of this increasingly popular arts and music festival, which has been happening since the 1980s. But for others, it's a jarring wake-up call that such massive events are not exempt from the harsh realities of global warming, which makes such extreme meteorological events all the more intense and more frequent. If anything, it may be time to rethink large events such as Burning Man, which attracted more than 70,000 people this year alone.

Truly Leaving No Trace?

Attendees known as "burners" strike down their Unicorner camp before new rainfalls in a muddy desert plain on September 3, 2023. AFP via Getty Images / Getty Images

Many are drawn to the festival for its various music events and its mind-blowing art installations, which often dot the surreal landscape in this slice of the Nevada desert, known colloquially as "the playa."

Guided by Burning Man's tenets of radical self-expression, self-reliance, and inclusion, literally almost anything goes in this week-long festival where no money is supposed to change hands, and a culture of gifting and community-building is cultivated.

One of Burning Man's most well-known principles is to "leave no trace," where partygoers are encouraged to meticulously pick up every bit of debris and "matter [that is] out of place" in order to leave the site in a better state than it was found.

However, the gap between Burning Man's ideals and its reality can be quite large. Despite attendees' efforts to leave no trace on the site itself, local residents in the nearest town of Reno, Nevada, have spoken out about how their town has become a dumping ground for discarded items after the event. The event could arguably contribute to overconsumption, as SFGATE reports:

"Public works has seen 'everything from coolers and bicycles to RVs' dumped in Reno after Burning Man. [Bryan Heller, the assistant director of Reno Public Works] estimates about half-a-dozen camping vehicles get ditched each year in the city. His guys sometimes pick up enough garbage to fill six 30-yard dumpsters. That's about 400 curbside garbage bins of trash."

A Complex Ecosystem Under Strain

Satellite image of some of the camps of the 70,000 festival attendees in 2017. DigitalGlobe via Getty Images / Getty Images

Then, there are the scientists who say that the site's delicate ecosystem is put under immense strain each year as tens of thousands of festival-goers converge on the 4,000-acre site to set up their camps and installations.

Though the otherworldly pale sands of the playa may seem like they don't support much life, it's actually an ancient, dried lakebed that reawakens under rain, as Patrick Donnelly, Nevada's state director of the Center for Biological Diversity, pointed out a few years back:

"Burners may mistake the playa for nothing but acres of dust. But playas are ecosystems that sustain a variety of species. Each year when the snowmelt floods onto the Black Rock, tiny communities of macroinvertebrates like fairy shrimp and brine fleas come to life. In a beautiful example of co-evolution, the timing of this hatch coincides with the arrival of migratory birds, who feast on these bugs on their journey north. [..]

"Playas are also complex hydrologic systems, draining and evaporating water based on small changes in topography and the alkali composition of the desert soil. Over time vehicular and foot traffic has changed the hydrology of the Black Rock. [..] Burning Man needs to take more responsibility for the damage it’s done to the environment and accept that it may have already reached the natural limits imposed by the Black Rock Desert Playa and its rural surroundings."

Climate Clash

Vehicles line up to leave the site of the annual Burning Man Festival on September 5, 2023. AFP via Getty Images / Getty Images

It would seem that Donnelly's views aren't unique; in fact, during the festival's opening last week, a coalition of climate organizations—including one founded by concerned members of the Burning Man community—blocked traffic temporarily from entering the festival grounds.

The short-lived protest was an attempt to draw attention to the fact that the event produces about 100,000 tons of CO2 a year—90% of that coming from travel as people drive and fly from all over the country and internationally to reach the festival.

Rising temperatures over the last few years have translated to more air-conditioned domes on the playa that operate on fossil fuels. Burning Man even has its own airstrip catering to private jets and helicopters. During that one week, the event ostensibly becomes Nevada's third-largest city, nicknamed Black Rock City. Though Burning Man has implemented various initiatives to make the festival greener, some protesters like Will Livernois of Scientist Rebellion are pointing out that it's simply not enough:

“The climate movement has reached a point where there is a split between climate mitigation through technological fixes, and climate justice that’s more oriented around systemic inequalities. We have to shift away from Burning Man’s green capitalism and focus on degrowth.”

Gentrification in a Microcosm

Indeed, some of those systemic inequalities are playing themselves out in how the festival has been "gentrified" in some ways by Silicon Valley's elite, as those who can afford to travel there on their private jets also exploit the labor of less-wealthy attendees to set up and maintain lavish and exclusive "plug-and-play" camps. As writer Keith A. Spencer eloquently laments in "Why The Rich Love Burning Man," this gentrifying microcosm sadly reflects the macrocosm outside the boundaries of this temporary festival:

"In a just, democratic society, everyone has equal voice. At Burning Man everyone is invited to participate, but the people who have the most money decide what kind of society Burning Man will be—they commission artists of their choice and build to their own whims. They also determine how generous they are feeling, and whether to withhold money.

"It might seem silly to quibble over the lack of democracy in the 'governance' of Black Rock City. After all, why should we care whether Jeff Bezos has commissioned a giant metal unicorn or a giant metal pirate ship, or whether [venture capitalist Jim] Tananbaum wants to spend $2 million on an air-conditioned camp? But the principles of these tech scions—that societies are created through charity, and that the true 'world-builders' are the rich and privileged—don’t just play out in the Burning Man fantasy world. They carry over into the real world, often with less-than-positive results."

Burning Man as a phenomenon has clearly reached a crossroads, brought on by the constraints of a finite planet and an increasingly unequal society. Given the fragility of the site's ecosystem and the very real environmental impacts that it imposes year after year, it might be time for organizers and community members to rethink how the festival continues going forward. Might Burning Man ban private jets, single-use plastics, and further commodification? Or perhaps it could also shift toward a bi-annual timing like some massive festivals have already done to lessen their carbon footprint? Perhaps it could also transition to a primarily decentralized model that features more regional "burns"—local Burning Man-inspired events that already happen year-round?

Whatever it may be, radical change needs to happen. Of course, we as a society will always need more art, beauty, and inspirational experiences in the world. At its most idealistic, Burning Man represents all those and more. But ultimately, those ideals have to be rooted in reality—and right now, that increasingly dire reality requires an urgent response.

Essay

Will the Rains Extinguish Burning Man?

The desert festival thrives on unpredictability, but a changing climate may be a bridge too far.

By Matthew Hutson

NEW YORKER

September 8, 2023

Attendees hold bottles containing urine at Burning Man, in Black Rock City, on September 2nd.Photographs by Sinna Nasseri

Last Thursday was a typically atypical day at Burning Man—the last before a series of atypically atypical days. It began, for me, with a bike ride with some friends to the Temple for an orchestral performance. Burning Man is named after a large effigy that burns in a raucous extravaganza on Saturday night; the next night, most of the same crowd sits in silence watching a wooden temple, of a different design each year, go up in flames. Beforehand, people fill the Temple with messages, writing on the walls and stapling photos and personal effects to the structure. I wandered inside and perused the community’s contributions. Many of them memorialized lost loved ones, but the ones that hit me hardest addressed the search for self-love. “To my past self,” one message read. “You are more amazing than you realize. We’ve made it.” The note ended with a hint at the future: “See you there. xoxo.”

I was in a receptive mood, and tears streamed down my face. I spent an hour reading. Then I headed to Burning Man’s makeshift airport, where I needed to reschedule a volunteer shift. The airport is a somewhat contentious spot: earlier in the week, climate protesters had blocked off the road leading to Burning Man to protest, among other things, the increasing number of private planes flying into the temporary metropolis that we call Black Rock City. For years, the community has struggled with how to deal with the influx of money. Wealthy individuals contribute to some stunning art, mutant vehicles, and theme camps on the playa, but the cash also allows people to insulate themselves in R.V.s set up by hired hands. In an official newsletter, the Burning Man Project reported that they “took action” last year against seventy camps for selling accommodations, amenities, or services. “Convenience camping (formerly described as turnkey or plug-and-play camping) is not permitted in BRC, and runs totally counter to the values of our community,” its Web site reads. Burning Man is supposed to be hard.

As I headed back to camp from the airport, I passed a photographer who’d set up a white tent to take portraits of Burners. I stopped in for one. Then I ran into a friend from New York who helps run Kostume Kult, a theme camp that gives away flamboyant garb and hosts parties and runway shows for anyone who wants to strut. We played Jenga, accepted Capri Sun bags injected with alcohol, and filmed people for a sing-along video that he’s making with his wife. Back at my own camp, Deep Playa Surprise, I was recruited for a bike ride back across the city to visit a foam body-wash party. We arrived too late and settled for shaved ice handed out by kids. Just as I started back, a dust storm rolled in. Blinded in the whiteout, I navigated by following the sound of a distant beat. It was the kind of extreme weather that’s predictably unpredictable at Burning Man: you learn to not leave camp without goggles and a dust mask.

I made it back in time to see that the camp across the street from us, run by a bunch of Aussies, was about to begin its Dildo Olympics. I joined a team, and then our own event for that day followed. We served cocktails and hosted a discussion with NiNo Alicea, the first Puerto Rican artist to earn a grant from Burning Man; his work this year, “ATABEY’s Treasure,” was a silver fish whose head and tail appeared to peek from below the desert ground to a height of about twenty feet. (Burning Man is glacially becoming more racially diverse, but it’s still heavily populated by wealthy, college-educated white people.) We rode out to the sculpture, where a couple who looked like Instagram influencers were photographing each other; an apparently professional ballet dancer soon arrived, and began posing and leaping around in a thong for another photographer. We returned to camp, where two friends on their way to No Holes Barred, a comedy club down the block, told us that they’d just got engaged. Earlier that week, one of them had run a desert ultramarathon on acid.

Black Rock City is shaped like a doughnut with a bite taken out of it: the Man is in the center of the hole, the Temple is in the bite mark, and art fills the hole, the bite, and the space beyond for about a mile. After dark, a group of us biked out to see the glowing art scattered around the playa. In a large piece made by my friend from Kostume Kult and his wife, four stacked rings, each about five feet high, rotated on an axis; by pulling on the rings with ropes, people could mix and match animal legs, bodies, heads, and ears. We watched a two-story heart-shaped chrysalis burn, revealing a steel butterfly inside. Farther out, we found a miniature airstrip with rocking chairs shaped like airplanes; we climbed up a tower—a plane pointed vertically with a lower level containing a lounge and open bar serving tea. (All bars at Burning Man are open bars.) I often think that Black Rock City has some of the best contemporary art in the world, from big installations like the temples to little pieces of mind-fuckery, like a lone mirror, set up on its own, that read, “Don’t look high.”



After a few hours of touring art, we headed to a dance party at a camp called Ashram Galactica. I ran into a friend who was building a retreat in Costa Rica. Then we rode back to camp through a nighttime dust storm.




The next day, Friday, was cold for Burning Man. In the late morning, a few of us went to a camp called Bubbles and Bass for champagne and house music. Then, in the early afternoon, it started raining. That would be the last of Burning Man as we knew it. The rain grew heavier, and our camp of about twenty hunkered down in our tents and R.V.s. I didn’t make it to my rescheduled airport shift—I saw someone try and fail to ride a bike in the mud, and figured that, even if I could make it to the airport on foot, nothing would be landing anyway. Eventually, most of us gathered in one large R.V. for the evening. Just walking the few dozen feet from my tent was treacherous. Water turns the playa dust into a clay-like mud; every step adds another layer of muck to your shoes, and after just a few steps your encased feet are pounds heavier. We drank, snacked, and laughed until bedtime. Then we used pull-string kitchen trash bags, one for each foot, to make it back to our tents, waddling along as we held them up by the strings. In my tent—which, after years of use, was no longer waterproof—pools of muddy water were collecting. I carpeted the floor with emergency rain ponchos, piled things on top, and tried to sleep in my half-soaked sleeping bag.

On Saturday morning, we surveyed the situation. Mud and pools of water surrounded us. Some people had planned to leave that day, to avoid a lengthy exodus—it can take hours to channel tens of thousands of people out of the desert and onto the narrow two lanes of Highway 447—but now it would be impossible. We listened on the radio to predictions of further showers. There would be no sun until Monday, and it could take a day or more of sunlight for the ground to dry; we realized that we might not get out until Wednesday.


We ate and drank, but not too much—we had plenty to go around, but wanted to avoid the porta-potties. Getting to them now involved navigating a slippery, stumbly, sticky obstacle course; the muck in the much-trod area in front of them was especially deep, and, inside, mud was building up on the floor, requiring a big, risky step up. (On the other hand, the extra height turned them into Squatty Potties—good for gut evacuation!) Because service trucks couldn’t reach the porta-potties, they started to fill up. We peed in jugs in our tents and contemplated shitting in bags. This was the approach people had taken during Renegade Burn, in 2021, when there was no official Burn because of the pandemic but thousands came to the playa anyway.


VIDEO FROM THE NEW YORKER

Your Body vs. Extreme Heat


In late August, a week before the festival, an even heavier rain had hit, from Tropical Storm Hilary, flooding much of the desert for days. (A photo of someone in a kayak circulated online.) I’d met a festival worker who told me that the best way to walk around then had been in socks—over either feet or shoes—and I shared this information with my campmates. We tried various combinations of socks, shoes, and trash bags. Meanwhile, some people got intermittent wireless or cellular signals. Texts arrived from friends asking if we were O.K., and we began to see ourselves in the news. The view from the outside didn’t align with the view from the inside. We were mostly just inconvenienced, enjoying one another’s company and half joking about “trauma bonding,” but news reports described it as a “disaster,” perhaps putting some people in mind of Hurricane Katrina or the Maui fires. On one site, we found a rumor about an Ebola outbreak, which we quickly dismissed; elsewhere we read that Chris Rock and Diplo had hiked through miles of mud to the pavement and, alarmingly, that someone had been electrocuted while trying to start a generator in standing water. (He may have died of drug intoxication, a coroner later said.)

In fact, everything did not go to hell. People supported one another, sharing resources within and between camps. We offered beer to our neighbors and received ice cream. One good Samaritan with a rainbow parasol hat carried a shovel to the porta-potties and started to clean out the mud. Later, I saw online that some people had made mud sculptures—a dragon, a phallus (naturally). The few bad vibes were cast at people who tried to drive out of Black Rock City even though we were being told to shelter in place. All the attempts I saw failed, as vehicles got stuck and spun their wheels, blocking and damaging the road. Maybe those people really needed to be somewhere else; maybe they just wanted to be somewhere else. I don’t know, and can’t judge them.




This was my eighth time at Burning Man, but my first in seven years. I’d stopped going because of the stress, the hassle, and the opportunity cost: at least a week offline, perhaps another week of travel and errands in Reno and elsewhere, and sometimes months of preparation. Once I get to the playa, I feel at home—more myself than anywhere else—but until that moment I’m racked with anxiety, thinking about every little thing that can go wrong, from faux pas to equipment failure to grievous injury. (During my second year, a toppling speaker broke my friend Suzie’s arm and she courageously stayed at the Burn in a sling all week before having surgery back in New York.) Going to Burning Man is a leap of faith—a bet that you can just deal.

In my early years, I did more psychedelics—LSD, psilocybin, MDMA, MDA, 2C-B, DOM—each trip also a leap of faith. My last few psychedelic trips at Burning Man, however, I felt overwhelmed and retreated to my tent to be with my own thoughts. I began sticking mostly to alcohol. This year, I decided to test myself again. Sitting around with my campmates in the muck on Saturday, I took half a tab of AL-LAD, a chemical analogue of LSD. The initial rush created a familiar anxiety—the kind that a high person feels when staring into a mirror that says, “Don’t look high.” I questioned the appropriateness of everything I did, and of core parts of myself. Then I reflected on the messages in the Temple about seeking self-love. Everyone questions themselves. We are all flawed, and it eats at us, yet we find ways to deal, hopefully.

I assigned myself the task of accepting what I could not control—the weather, the porta-potties, parts of who I was. Through all this, I was actually having a pretty good time. One laughter attack with a campmate—the kind that feeds on itself—left us gasping and teary-eyed. Someone kept shouting “Best Burn ever!” at passersby. Maybe it was. In a way, the wetness had disrupted the festival, but it had also reified it as a time and place for disruption. I thought back to my first Burn, in 2007. When I arrived, after midnight on Tuesday morning, the Man was already on fire; an old-school Burner had ignited it in apparent protest of what he later said had become an R.V.-filled “Alterna-Disney,” hoping to bring the festival back to its countercultural roots. Maybe the rains would be another sort of jolt. Or maybe they would lead to more R.V.s.

Because of the rain, the Man would not burn on Saturday night. But the Aussies set up a small wooden man in the middle of the street, doused it in gasoline, and lit it up. Every year, there’s a fire conclave—a collection of fire dancers invited to perform around the Man before it goes up in flames. During my last Burn, in 2016, I was part of the conclave, spinning poi. Seeing the mini-man, I grabbed my L.E.D. poi and jammed out, feeling sorry for everyone whose performances and events had been cancelled. The Aussies followed their burn with a dance party that went until eight in the morning. By then, it was still cool and cloudy, but the wind had dried the mud enough for us to start taking down our shade structure and kitchen and begin packing things up. Service trucks reached the porta-potties. People marched over carrying gallon-size water jugs filled with pee that was dark amber from tactical dehydration.

The weather was iffy, with sun and clouds here and there. Two people in our camp made it out in a truck; two others started driving, got caught in a shower, and trudged back to camp on foot. The new rain meant that no one else would be getting out that day. But Monday was sunny, and we all managed to pack up, scour the ground for moop (matter out of place), and leave, along with much of the rest of Black Rock City. It took eight hours of stop-and-go traffic to drive the few miles to the pavement—not the shortest exodus, not the longest. I think they burned the Man as I was on the road to Reno.




Last year, Burning Man was exceptionally hot and dusty. Those conditions persuaded many people not to return this year. But last week, we yearned for the heat and the dust. When people ask me whether the event has changed much since I started going, I say it hasn’t. It’s grown bigger; bars now ask for I.D.; Instagram wasn’t a thing before. But those changes are minor. Climate change could be an existential risk. If it gets too hot on the playa, some people will die, and many more will stop coming; if heavier rain falls, a fema situation could unfold. Logistically, financially, ethically, That Thing in the Desert might become untenable. From Reno, I reached out to the Burning Man Project to ask whether they’ll be planning things differently next year. A spokesperson later wrote that “it would be too soon to know if anything next year might need to change.”

As those road-blockaders saw, Burning Man is not only a victim of environmental change but also a perpetrator of it. A friend—the one engaged to the ultramarathoner—recently described the festival as “the ultimate expression of a capitalist economy that throws off so much surplus wealth” that “tens of thousands of people can gather to create self-destructing artifacts.” In 2019, when the Burning Man Project last sought to renew its permit with the Bureau of Land Management, it faced environmental-impact requirements that it argued “would forever negatively change the fabric of the Burning Man event, if not outright kill it.” (At least some of the requirements were dropped, and the permit was renewed.)

But there are many kinds of adaptation. Larry Harvey, Burning Man’s late founder, once said that the festival would be over when it was everywhere else—that is, when its ethos had become the Zeitgeist. Burning Man’s ten principles—radical inclusion, gifting, decommodification, radical self-reliance, radical self-expression, communal effort, civic responsibility, leaving no trace, participation, and immediacy—are not exclusive to a late-August party in Nevada capped by ritual conflagrations. They can take myriad forms. Humanity may face a climate apocalypse, or another kind of apocalypse, and selfishness and resentment and bad vibes will surely emerge, but so will generosity, practicality, and good vibes. Waiting for the shuttle to the Reno airport on Tuesday, I asked a woman from Montreal about her Burn. She’d also seen someone shovelling mud out of the porta-potties; other people noticed what was happening and grabbed their own shovels. “The news said we’d become like ‘Lord of the Flies,’ ” she told me. “But we’re not animals. This is what we do.” ♦







Matthew Hutson is a contributing writer at The New Yorker covering science and technology.

 

How Burning Man got stuck in the mud- 

CBC News · Posted: Sep 08, 2023