Campaigners and “Burners” clashed across a temporary roadblock in Nevada that caused miles of traffic to be backed up.
A group of climate activists were detained on Sunday by environmental authorities in the US state of Nevada after they blocked the only road leading to the yearly Burning Man event and created a miles-long traffic bottleneck.
After a standoff with irate motorists wanting to access the festival, park guards in a white pickup vehicle slammed a temporary barricade to which members of the climate advocacy organisation Seven Circles had chained themselves.
With their weapons drawn and sirens blasting, the rangers ordered the activists to the ground and manhandled a few of them into handcuffs when they didn’t obey quickly enough.
One protester can be heard screaming and wailing, “We’re nonviolent!” in a video of the incident that was uploaded to social media, while another makes a feeble attempt to avoid capture by denying affiliation with the protest.
The demonstrators are overheard being told by the rangers that they are “trespassing on tribal land.” According to reports, several were arrested. The roadblock barred vehicles from going in either way on a road that had a bad reputation for traffic during the first few days of the festival. It was situated between the small hamlet of Gerlach and Burning Man’s temporary, purpose-built metropolis, Black Rock City. 80,000 people attend the festival, which draws them to the Black Rock Desert for a week of dancing, themed camping, events, and, according to some reports, heavy drug usage.
In a video taken earlier on Sunday, protestors challenge irate motorists to “call the cops” as they obstruct festivalgoers from folding up the barrier by chaining themselves to it.
According to Seven Circles, the protest served to highlight “capitalism’s inability to address the ecological breakdown of the climate” and the “popularisation of Burning Man among wealthy people who do not live the stated values of Burning Man, resulting in the commodification of the event.” According to the group, the festival’s plans to become carbon-negative by 2030 are insufficient.
But instead of taking the lengthy, scorching trip through the desert, the event’s wealthiest visitors frequently arrive by private jet, landing at an airfield built especially for these high rollers.
The Burning Man Project, which promotes the idea of “radical self-reliance,” forbids the use of cash inside festival gates and asks visitors to carry everything they’ll need for the week. The “leave no trace” policy of the event demands visitors to take all of their rubbish with them when the party is ended, but this directive isn’t always followed.
The festival’s organisers filed a lawsuit against the federal Bureau of Land Management in January, alleging that the agency broke environmental regulations by permitting a sizable geothermal energy project less than a mile from Gerlach. The organisation behind the project responded by praising geothermal’s green energy credentials and criticising Burning Man for consuming “copious amounts of fossil fuels” every year.
