News Reporter: Climate Coach: Climate change meets Burning Man

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Down-to-earth advice for life on our changing planet.

By Michael J. Coren

Welcome. This week, Maine's puffins are back and canceling oil leases in Alaska. But first, Burning Man.

Burning Man prides itself on 10 principles, two of which are "radical self reliance" and "communal effort."

Over the weekend, the two collided. Monsoon rains pummeled the desert bacchanalia, turning the ground into a muddy quagmire.

After organizers temporarily shut the gates, attendees made the best of it. During the day, groups sculpted elephant statues out of mud, then danced and played music at night. As food, water and patience ran low, said Anya Kamenetz, who has attended for nearly a decade, "people really didn't miss a beat."

"It's a teachable moment, as far as climate disasters and extreme weather" go, she added. "This is very much just a trial run under really, really easy conditions for what a lot of people go through."

Burning Man, for those who've been, can be either a harrowing or transcendental experience — often both.

The event has evolved into perhaps the world's largest living experiment in "decommodification," inclusion, self-expression and civic responsibility, according to organizers. Virtually no commerce is allowed. Gifts are encouraged. You'll see a mix of hedonism, astonishing generosity, occasional frustrations, and gargantuan mutant art cars like El Pulpo Mecanico, the metal octopus spitting flame from its arms.

This city of contradiction exists for a few weeks, apart if not separate from the outside "default world," in the hauntingly beautiful Black Rock Desert of Nevada.

It has always existed on the edge of human survivability. But this year, following last year's hellaciously hot conditions, the climate threatened to push it over the brink — even for some experienced Burners.

"There was lots of talk about whether … the Black Rock Desert had tipped from 'nearly totally unsuitable for human habitation' to 'unsurvivable,' " writes Cory Doctorow in the New York Times. "The world is getting more and more unpredictable. Nothing is going according to plan."

The Learning Curve

In the United States and European Union, annual carbon dioxide emissions peaked decades ago, writes The Washington Post's Amanda Shendruk. Some nations, including Norway, already produce nearly all their electricity from renewable sources. But global emissions are still rising.

Christiana Figueres, the architect of the Paris climate accord, has a response: "stubborn optimism."

This doesn't mean dismissing reality, writes Shendruk, it's "a dissatisfied, gritty, determined confidence that humanity can bring about needed change in the face of great challenges. It's a necessary precursor to action, and adopting this attitude requires shifting focus from the past to the future."

Indeed, the worst-case climate scenario — a global mean temperature rise above 5 degrees Celsius — now seems unlikely. But to keep warming in check, every tenth of a degree matters.

The Second Degree

Many of you had thoughts on how to avoid shifting baselines after reading my column on the problem of vanishing fireflies. Ronald from Minnesota, a retired conservation biologist, said "It's a concept I'm quite familiar with, but your piece clued me into the fact that I need to talk about it more with non-biologists."

Many others were demonstrating how you could do this in your own backyard. "In our suburban-type yard in the Eastern Panhandle of West Virginia we are a little island, dark and pesticide-free," writes Patsy. "We have fireflies." On one side, she says, her neighbor uses Roundup. On the other, floodlights burn. Neither has fireflies. But Patsy's remain: "I hope those on our little island find mates to enchant our summer evenings for years to come."

My column on why we all need to think like Floridians now — the state is not the exception, just early, when it comes to natural disasters — drew some to distance themselves from the Sunshine State.

"I prefer to think like a Marylander about this matter, which simply means being clear-eyed and candid about the challenges we'll face here," said one commenter.

Florida's state government might take that advice. A Google search for the words "climate change" on Florida's official government website surfaced less than 10 mentions since 2019. The Alaska government site mentions it hundreds of times over the same span.

On the Climate Front

From The Post:

Biden is blocking oil drilling in millions of acres of 'irreplaceable' wild lands on Alaska's North Slope.

More than 100 countries already recognize the right to a healthy environment. A 6th-century Roman doctrine could help bring along the rest.

Extreme heat is dangerous for those with schizophrenia. Here are the unexpected reasons.

This is where dangerous heat is surging around the world.

From elsewhere:

The climate crisis could mean the twilight of the American West, writes Wade Davis in Rolling Stone, and farmers are urging the draining of Arizona's Lake Powell.

The United Kingdom reversed course and eased its effective ban of onshore wind In England.

What do climate scientists tell their kids about the future? Six climate experts describe the future to their young children in Scientific American.

Maine's puffins are rebounding despite warmer water, thanks to the sand lance.

The Ballard Locks in Seattle connect Puget Sound to Lake Washington. Fish use these water ladders to travel upriver and spawn. And most of the time, reader Alan Jackson writes, salmon are a rare sight.

But this year, the water was teeming with salmon. In Puget Sound, Chinook salmon are listed under the federal Endangered Species Act. Native Americans at the locks, he said, were scaring off harbor seals to save the salmon.

"Various agencies and groups have been working hard for the past several years to improve the situation with many small changes to make life easier for the salmon," writes Jackson. "It now appears those efforts may be bearing fruit."