Burning Man opposing geothermal plan
Burning Man attendees trek to Nevada’s Black Rock Desert every year with a ‘‘leave no trace’’ ethos, erecting and then disassembling a temporary city for the raucous week-long art and music festival. Organisers even aim to make the bacchanal ‘‘carbon negative’’.
But now the people behind Burning Man are suing the Biden Administration to try to stop a geothermal project that may one day produce carbon-free energy.
The Burning Man Project, a San Francisco-based non-profit that holds the festival every year, has filed a lawsuit against the federal government in the US District Court for the District of Nevada.
The non-profit fears that building roads, power lines and a geothermal plant on lands around Gerlach, Nevada, a gateway town for Burning Man, could degrade hot springs near the festival site. ‘‘These hot springs are unique environmental resources that are relied upon by the local community,’’ it says.
The project is part of the Biden Administration’s push to run the US power grid entirely on clean energy by 2035.
Once an underground carnival for free-spirited bohemians,
Burning Man has grown into a multi-day mega-event that attracts Hollywood celebrities, Silicon Valley executives, and tens of thousands of other revellers from around the world to let loose in the Nevada desert. Many attendees acknowledge the greenhouse gas emissions and other negative environmental impacts of flying and driving into a remote landscape.
Among the event’s ‘‘10 Principles’’ are civic responsibility and leaving no trace once the party is over. But it recently capped attendance at 80,000, in part because of the amount of rubbish generated by festivalgoers.