Tech Deck Tricks: Can Burning Man Pull Out Of Its Climate Death Spiral?

It was desperation that led Michelle to the BDSM tent at Burning Man, not desperate for excitement. Far from being a masochist, Michelle just wanted to turn down the heat, and the BDSM tent had air conditioning.

Burning Man 2022 was hot. Ominous monkeys started out on the dusty bottom of desert Black Rock Lake in Nevada on Monday, August 29, with a high of 98 degrees Fahrenheit. Temperatures soared to 103 degrees over the weekend, a record high for a place that is no longer habitable.

It is not easy to live in this space of shapeless and cracked white dust. Burning Man's goal has always been to be there. But last year's circumstances brought a general sense of exhaustion and unease, with many of the 80,000 attendees posing an existential question about whether the Desert Ceremony should continue.

Tickets usually sell out within seconds of going on sale, and when tickets go on sale for the 2023 event on April 12th, that likely won't change. Alternatively, the event may slowly wane after reaching its pre-pandemic cultural peak.

Reno, Nevada is the closest major city in the United States, and it's a city that's just getting hot. Nevada experiences an average of 20 "hazardous" sweltering days per year. By 2050, it should be 30 days. This does not mean that the number of days will be in triple digits every year from now on, but it does mean that it is becoming increasingly likely.

Michelle, 35, enjoys the outdoors and enjoys camping and hiking. He lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, and counts several "Berners" among his former friends and roommates. “Being confident is one of the core principles, and I thought it would be a really fun ride for me,” he says, referring to the 10 Burning Man Principles that festival-goers adhere to. (Michelle asked me not to use her last name because she feared being publicly identified as a Berner could negatively affect her career.)

Two friends bought him a ticket at the last minute and organized an endurance camp for 175 people. There will be fresh vegan food, sustainable living talks, bio toilets, and the campground will provide compost for other campers. He packed a suitcase with light clothing, a large hat, electrolytes, sunscreen, plenty of water, two battery-powered fans, and a two-person tent. But these supplies did not stand up to the dust and heat.

By half past eight in the morning, his tent had turned into an oven. I was looking for a place to hide from the heat. Many of the cooling stations listed on the official schedule were packed with people looking for a break. Meanwhile, a dust storm swept across the beach, limiting visibility to a few feet and covering everyone in alkaline dust.

"I really felt like I was going to die," Michelle says. He knew two of his friends had air conditioning in their condo, but they were a 45-minute bike ride away. Finally he found their tents and entered. When they arrived an hour later, Michelle was in crisis. "It's a lot. I think I need to go home," she said, crying. In the end he stayed, and by the end of the week he had the unpleasant task of cleaning up and disposing of spoiled food from camp freezers: the old generators in the field had broken down.

It's hard to be green in the dust

Full disclosure: I spent Burning Man 2022 in an air-conditioned, gas-guzzling truck. It was my sixth year at The Burn and I was having a crisis of conscience about my visit, exacerbated by sitting on a 12-hour exit line that was so long you could see it from space.