XPost: sci.environment, talk.politics.guns, alt.burningman
XPost: sac.politics, alt.fan.rush-limbaugh

https://news.yahoo.com/burning-man-climate-reckoning-begun-140000244.html

Burners treading through the muck following a heavy downpour at the
Burning Man festival in Black Rock City, Nevada, September 2, 2023.

Burning Man, the transient bacchanal that attracts more than 70,000
partygoers to the remote Nevada desert for eight days every August, prides itself on its environmental bona fides. One of the festival’s main
operational tenets is “leave no trace,” an essentially impossible feat for
an event of its size. The Burning Man Project, the organization that runs
the festival, has set a goal of becoming “carbon negative” — removing more emissions from the environment than the festival produces — by 2030.

It’s a tall order: The festival generates around 100,000 tons of carbon
dioxide every year, the equivalent of burning over 100 million pounds of
coal. A series of disasters at this year’s festival have brought the gap between Burning Man’s rhetoric and reality into sharp relief: First, a
half dozen protesters demanding stronger environmental commitments from
the organization blocked the festival’s entrance for roughly an hour
before they were forcibly removed. Days later, torrential rain — the kind
of event made more likely and extreme by climate change — stranded
revelers in a dystopian free-for-all. But the greatest irony of all may be Burning Man’s less-publicized opposition to renewable energy in its own backyard.

A broad consensus exists, of course, on how to slow the climactic changes
that are beginning to wreak havoc like this: Replace the fossil fuels that currently power much of the world with a wide variety of carbon-free
sources. In fact, the federal government approved one such project, a geothermal energy initiative in the Nevada desert a mile outside of
Gerlach, last year. The exploratory project, funded by an international renewable energy company called Ormat Technologies, aims to find out
whether geothermal — which taps naturally occurring heat under Earth’s
surface to produce clean energy — is commercially viable in the Nevada
desert.

But the venture faced immediate pushback from the Burning Man Project, one
of a group of plaintiffs that sued the Bureau of Land Management, or BLM,
over its approval of up to 19 exploratory geothermal wells in the Black
Rock National Conservation Area. The Burning Man Project, the lead
plaintiff in the lawsuit, also worked with residents of the tiny town of Gerlach, the hamlet closest to the geothermal development, to appeal the
BLM’s decision. The wells, the organization said, would “threaten the viability” of Burning Man’s various projects in Nevada by potentially jeopardizing local hot springs in the area and disrupting the desert
ecosystem. The plaintiffs argued that BLM had approved the project without adequate environmental review and hadn’t sufficiently consulted local communities, including the Summit Lake Paiute Tribe, in its permitting
process.

“People travel to Gerlach to experience the solitude of the vast open
spaces and undeveloped vistas present in the Black Rock Desert,” the
lawsuit said, “as well as to attend numerous events and to pursue a
variety of recreation experiences in the undeveloped desert.”

After the lawsuit was filed, the Washoe County Commission in Reno
ultimately voted 3-2 against the proposed geothermal project, a move that baffled clean energy experts and overturned the county’s prior approval of
the project.

The claim that the region remains relatively undisturbed, given the 70,000-person party that rolls in every year, rang particularly hollow.

“Some of the hype around Gerlach has been disturbing from a scientific
point of view,” James Faulds, Nevada’s state geologist, told Grist. “The Gerlach area has already been disturbed by man.”

Faulds added that no hot springs in the area besides the ones located immediately above the actual geothermal wells would be affected by the development, and that the geothermal power plant itself wouldn’t be
visible from the Burning Man festival. (The Burning Man Project did not
respond to Grist’s requests for comment.)

Ormat may try to appeal the county’s decision or scrap the project and
apply to build new geothermal development elsewhere in the state instead. “Ormat will continue to press forward with exploration and development of
its renewable energy projects throughout the State of Nevada to help the
state and federal government meet their renewable energy goals,” the
company said in a statement following the county commission’s vote.

A single megawatt of geothermal energy can provide enough power for up to
1,000 residential homes year-round. That gives it a smaller land-use
footprint than either wind or solar power, Faulds pointed out.

“Let’s say that power plant is producing 30 megawatts. You could drive by
that and say, ‘Huh, that’s 30,000 homes,’” Faulds said. “That could be a
big chunk of homes in a city in Southern California or Northern
California, wherever the power is being sold to — where a lot of the
Burning Man folks, of course, come from.”

This article originally appeared in Grist—a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future.



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stupid people won't be offended.

Durham Report: The FBI has an integrity problem. It has none.

No collusion - Special Counsel Robert Swan Mueller III, March 2019.
Officially made Nancy Pelosi a two-time impeachment loser.

Thank you for cleaning up the disaster of the 2008-2017 Obama / Biden
fiasco, President Trump.

Under Barack Obama's leadership, the United States of America became the
The World According To Garp. Obama sold out heterosexuals for Hollywood
queer liberal democrat donors.

President Trump boosted the economy, reduced illegal invasions, appointed dozens of judges and three SCOTUS justices.

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