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Is Burning Man living up to its Green Man intentions?

The headline refers to a sign that appears as you drive (or as I drove, in a huge white pickup truck) into the Playa at five miles an hour, and it's not a bad summary of the enviro discussion here at Burning Man. How can you really be green at an event you have to drive hundreds of miles to, mostly through desert, with all your heavy crap in the car? Where will all those plastic water bottles end up? Is there such thing as a petroleum-free camp? What about all those Zip Ties, the preferred technology for securing dome coverings and lights on your bike?

Is Burning Man this year anywhere close to carbon-free?

No, says Andie Grace, the woman who ably answers the media here. "We're doing everything we can to lessen the footprint, but we can't make it disappear. After all, to do that we'd all have to sit home, strip naked, and eat grubs."

Which is not to say there isn't good stuff going on here. Says BMan's enviro czar Tom Price, "We are at or slightly ahead of our expectations. We switched 90 percent from red diesel, which comes from places like Saudi Arabia, to biodiesel that comes from Minden, Nevada." (Problems with biodiesel clogging generator filters -- which is does, because it scours out previous petroleum deposits in those gennies -- have been resolved by changing filters.)

The Man, which is currently in the process of being rebuilt, is lighted with neon powered with a 30 kilowatt solar array, which also powers the entire man complex. It's also powering the power tools the powerful construction people are using to rebuild the Man (which burned unexpectedly early Tuesday morning during the lunar eclipse. It was epic and historic, and a good time was had by all).

When that solar array, donated by Renewable Ventures, MMA, comes down on Saturday before the burn, "we're going to build 120 kilowatts in the town of Gerlach," says Price, "and 60 kilowatts in the town of Lovelock. That's two million dollars in free renewable energy."

Plus, once you get here, you ride your bike everywhere. Or your scooter. Or something. But you don't drive your car for a week. As Burning Man founder Larry Harvey said, "that offsets something."

I will take this back after I've been home for a month, but right now, sitting here in my skimpy pink dress, using a solar-powered WiFi connection on my solar-powered laptop looking out that the spectacular Esplanade full of solar-powered art and just digging the ambient laughter and music of strangers, it seems like Burning Man really could change the ... okay, okay. I'll stop now.

Next post: How Albertson's grocery store became a beacon of environmental ethics after its execs visited the Playa last year.

A good analysis of the fateful hurricane’s political aftermath

There are lots of Katrina retrospectives floating around today, on the 2nd anniversary. If I were a better man, maybe I’d write one, but thinking back on those events makes me feel sick, helpless rage all over again, and I’m about to head to a picnic with my two boys, so I’m gonna choose to […]

When it comes to climate change, prevention is more important than adaptation

G. Gordon Liddy's daughter repeated a standard Denier line in our debate: Humans are very adaptable -- we've adapted to climate changes in the past and will do so in the future.

I think Hurricane Katrina gives the lie to that myth. No, I'm not saying humans are not adaptable. Nor am I saying global warming caused Hurricane Katrina, although warming probably did make it more intense. But on the two-year anniversary of Katrina, I'm saying Katrina showed the limitations of adaptation as a response to climate change, for several reasons.

Miltary tech goes eco

Earth2Tech brings us seven ways the military is using green technology. And don’t forget how they’re tackling overpopulation!

Animal-rights groups point out the climatic effect of meat-eating

With which instrument do you cause more greenhouse-gas emissions: your car key or your fork? It’s a question asked in an advertising campaign by the Humane Society, which, along with other big animal-rights groups, is striving to open consumers’ eyes to an oft-overlooked connection: the climatic impact of eating meat. Bolstered by a recent United […]

Offset customers don’t buy offsets to justify their other behavior

So, TerraPass just got done with a customer survey, with several thousand responses. Uncovered was the shocking news that people are not, in fact, using offsets as an excuse to indulge in other bad behaviors. (Here’s a one-page PDF summarizing results.) In fact, just as you’d expect, people who care enough to pay for offsets […]

Some unwitting climate change advice from the National Review

Hey, did anyone here read that recent article on political strategies for action on climate change? You know, the one published in the National Review?

[crickets chirping]

OK, I generally don't recommend the National Review on environmental policy, but I couldn't help peeking at the recent article [PDF] by Jim Manzi. Various writers of the more thoughtful right-of-center blogs have alternatively described it as "brilliant" and "a taste of how a wised-up, heads-out-of-the-sand Right could kick [liberals'] ass on the issue" of global warming. I hadn't realized that climate change was a game of flag football, but there you go.

An interview with Joe Biden about energy and the environment

This is part of a series of interviews with presidential candidates produced jointly by Grist and Outside. Update: Joe Biden was chosen as Barack Obama’s running mate on Aug. 23, 2008. (He dropped out of the presidential race on Jan. 3, 2008.) Joe Biden. Photo: Michael Millhollin Joe Biden says his top priority as president […]

Why do documented liars and dummies get taken seriously about climate change?

Hey, Europe, about the whole climate change thing … just calm down already: Curbs needed to fight global warming could be less drastic than a 50-percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 favored by the European Union, the United States’ chief climate negotiator said on Monday. This, of course, echoes the latest right-wing line […]

El Niño was not the cause of 2006 warming patterns in the U.S.

A new study by NOAA's Earth System Research Lab finds:

Greenhouse gases likely accounted for more than half of the widespread warmth across the continental United States last year ... [T]he probability of U.S. temperatures breaking a record in 2006 had increased 15-fold compared to pre-industrial times because of greenhouse gas increases in Earth's atmosphere.

How did they come to this conclusion?

[T]he NOAA team analyzed 42 simulations of Earth's climate from 18 climate models provided for the latest assessment by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change ... The results of the analysis showed that greenhouse gases produced warmth over the entire United States in the model projections, much like the warming pattern that was observed last year across the country.