The Exodus
The Exodus
Climate change and the shifting values of Burning Man
“The Lord went before them by day in a pillar of cloud, to lead their way; and by night in a pillar of fire.” —Exodus 13:21
The first burn was held on Baker Beach in San Francisco, when the world population was less than five billion and atmospheric CO2 concentrations were just 348 parts per million (ppm). Founders Larry Harvey and Jerry James built and burnt a human-shaped effigy, eight feet tall, which was later called, “The Man,” to celebrate the summer solstice with twenty or so other beach-goers. A few more people joined the celebration the following year, and the year after that, until eventually they were forced to find a bigger venue where the authorities would be less concerned about the fire getting out of control. At the same time, esteemed climate scientist James Hansen warned a United States Senate committee that climate change had begun, and unless they took steps to reverse it by reducing atmospheric greenhouse gas emissions, it could produce devastating effects that included extreme weather events, wildfires, reduced food security, and massive human migration. That year—the year that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was established—saw the hottest average global temperature in recorded history up to that point. Corporations whose interests were threatened by a warming planet launched coordinated and sophisticated disinformation campaigns to convince the public that climate change wasn’t real.
A new site was established in an ancient, dried-up lake bed in Nevada’s Black Rock desert. The Man grew to 40 feet tall, the crowds ballooned into the hundreds, and atmospheric CO2 concentrations rose to over 354 ppm. That same year, I posted my first message to the World Wide Web on a Usenet bulletin board. The annual Burning Man celebration was starting to take on more of a formalized structure, including the establishment of themed camps, local fire and emergency infrastructure, and a regular newsletter: The Black Rock Gazette. Just as the polarizing effects of corporate propaganda were taking effect on broader society, a different kind of society was taking shape in what came to be known as Black Rock City. It was a society that existed for only a few days each year as a modern-day Utopia, which eschewed corporate influence and hyper-consumerism and instead fostered an ethos of inclusion, cooperation, and radical self-expression. Just one year after the world’s first modern social media site (Six Degrees) was launched, atmospheric CO2 concentrations reached 367 ppm, the Kyoto Protocol was ratified by 41 industrialized nations (but not the United States), and Burning Man held its first art exhibit in San Francisco called, “The Art of Burning Man: An Incendiary Exhibition.”
As news media began to take notice of the celebration in the desert, Burners of every persuasion flocked to Black Rock City from around the world. The population grew from several hundred to several thousand, and an airport was established to shuttle the rich and famous into and out of Black Rock City for the annual event. Year after year, artists decorated the playa with their magnificent work—some frivolous, some profound, and everything in between—all of them committed to the ideals embodied by the organic, anti-consumerist, anti-establishment movement that had matured through a millennial boundary over the course of two decades. Global CO2 concentrations rose to 376 ppm, the third annual IPCC report concluded that human-induced greenhouse gas emissions was “very likely” causing global warming, and Burners shared their experiences through new social media channels, like Friendster and MySpace.
The Burning Man phenomenon began to spread beyond a single event in the Black Rock desert to events all across the globe. Organizers formalized the movement’s ethos, not in commandments, but rather in principles. Ten, in fact. They included things like decommodification, civic responsibility, and leaving no trace behind after each event. These Ten Principles, as they came to be known, were intended to formalize the values represented by the global Burning Man cultural movement, and are embraced by committed Burners who strive to adhere to them in their regular lives outside of annual events. Grassroots movements emerging from Burning Man, like Burners Without Borders, have animated the ethos captured in the Ten Principles, by raising funds and volunteering in recovery efforts following the devastation that ravaged Mississippi in the wake of Hurricane Katrina—a $125 billion storm, and one of the worst ever to hit the United States—a year before Facebook and Twitter were unleashed on the public, when CO2 concentrations were 380 ppm, and Al Gore released An Inconvenient Truth and shared a Nobel Peace Price with the IPCC. The Man had grown to 80 feet.
The population of Black Rock City surpassed 50,000 people for the first time, just as the human population surpassed 7 billion and atmospheric CO2 concentrations surpassed 390 ppm. Deepwater Horizon released some 210 million gallons of crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico after leaking continuously for five straight months, resulting in one of the worst environmental disasters in history. That year featured 275 art installations on the playa and the first organized meeting of academics in Black Rock City. A rainstorm produced a breathtaking rainbow, causing some Burners to reflect on the meaning of it all. The Man was 104 feet tall.
Burning Man and its ideals were slowly infusing the collective consciousness just as fossil fuel organizations were adapting their disinformation campaigns in this new age of social media to confuse the public’s understanding of credible climate science. Paris replaced Kyoto as atmospheric CO2 concentrations reached 399 ppm. Lytton, British Columbia wouldn’t be obliterated by wildfire for another year yet. Famous Burners like Elon Musk (Twitter), Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook), Jeff Bezos (Amazon), Sergey Brin and Larry Page (Google), and Alexis Ohanian (Reddit) (among many others) used their influence to help entrench Burning Man’s carefully crafted ethos of decommodification and the rejection of corporate sponsorship and commercialization. Not even Brexit, or the election of an antidemocratic president during the hottest year on record, or the rise of hard-right authoritarian populism and white Christian nationalism, or a pandemic could quench the spirit of Burning Man, whose numbers swelled into the millions worldwide. Yet The Man shrunk to 70 feet, and the “leave no trace” ideal was becoming somewhat more aspirational than principled.
It rained again in Black Rock City this year, when global atmospheric CO2 concentrations reached 418 ppm—a concentration that is higher than at any time over the past 23 million years. It was the hottest summer ever recorded. The population of Black Rock City was 73,000—just seven thousand fewer than people evacuated from Fort McMurray fleeing the ravages of a massive wildfire seven years earlier. The world population was 8.1 billion. The city’s airport accommodated 880 flights this year, carrying movie stars, tech moguls, political leaders, and billionaires into and out of the event in helicopters and private jets. Some even endured the mud, despite the postponement of the titular burn due to the local weather conditions—rain in the desert. When it was over, social media sites exploded with influencers showing off their fancy costumes as they lamented the muddy deluge and embraced the cognitive dissonance that accompanies simultaneous decommodification and radical self-expression. It has been estimated that the carbon footprint of an annual Burning Man event is around 100,000 tons of CO2; roughly equivalent to that required to power some 19,000 homes for a year. The Exodus began before The Man burned.
I am left with the enduring image of long columns of cars, SUVs, pickup trucks, and over-sized recreational vehicles stuck in the muddy desert after a day-long rain event during the hottest summer ever recorded against the backdrop of the worst wildfire season in living memory. When the going got tough, many Burners bailed, leaving their trash behind, as they prioritized themselves over the larger collective. Maybe that’s a sign of the times. Or, maybe it’s a modern interpretation of the Immediacy principle—what some consider as the most important of the Ten Principles.
Burning Man is an ideal. It’s an ideal based around mutual respect, inclusivity, creativity, and cooperation, all directed towards a common vision for something better. But it only works when those values are embraced for something more than social media influence and bragging rights, or dare I say—immediacy. There is a significant overlap between the most represented age demographic at Burning Man and the age demographic that is least likely to vote in a general election (in Canada and the US). That is a shame. Not even Burners live in Black Rock City year round. One of the Ten Principles is civic responsibility. Were Burners and their contemporaries to vote as a block in any general election, they could change the world. Maybe they could make it an ideal world and restore the stature of The Man.