Burning Man is quite environmentally-friendly on a local scale because it’s almost impossible to damage the Black Rock Desert and they really do leave no garbage (or water!) behind. But not surprisingly, a festival about getting far away from civilization and lighting shit on fire is incredibly bad for the climate.

Naively, the problem with Burning Man is the amount of electricity required to keep 45,000 people alive in the desert for a week. There has been a push to use biodiesel for generators and art vehicles in recent years. But analysis finds that participants emit ten times as much carbon getting to the festival as they do once there, for a total of 0.7 tons of carbon per person! (Although that analysis only includes direct emissions and not the indirect emissions caused by producing materials used at the festival.)

Back in 2007, when Americans could afford to care about the environment instead of the economy, the theme of Burning Man was “Green Man”. This article gives an excellent overview of the carbon footprint of the festival (including the tantilizing prospect of transportation by train). I can’t find any discussion online about the environmental impact since then.

One argument given in favour of the festival is that it is environmental-consciousness raising. But given that 0.7 tons per person is about half the sustainable global yearly output, at some point consciousness must get raised to the point when people stop going.

Another argument is that there is a carbon opportunity cost: if people didn’t drive to Burning Man, they’d take a plane on another holiday. That is true as long as carbon emissions are not priced. Once people can’t afford to go on any holiday that’s unreasonably far away, they’ll direct their efforts into more local gatherings. BC has two explicitly Burning-Man-themed festivals (Recompression and Burn in the Forest) and some other festivals that could be become cozier, more human-scale Burning Men.