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Got back with a wretched sore throat last week from Burning Man, where I lived a pretty upstanding life. But not a green one, by any stretch: I rented an SUV to get to the event, spent $150 each way on gas, used ice by the bagfull to chill our nightly bottle of Proseco and generally squandered paper (towels), plastic (water bottles) and any other resources I could get my hands one (zip ties, shower water, electricity generated with petro-diesel fuel).

And I'm still not as bad as some people I know, who put up domes of toxic PVC pipe and dump their graywater on the Playa.

In past years, I've camped in the Alternative Energy Zone, and learned a lot from those people, including Roger, the AEZ's mayor, about minimizing consumption on the Playa. I put up solar panels, I made scooters run on solar power, I evaporated every drop of graywater. In the AEZ, people were watching.

But this year, in the magical and luxurious Red Nose District, I took showers in water heated with propane and ran my kitchen blender off a diesel generator. When I tried to spread the AEZ gospel of biodiesel and solar power alternatives in advance of the event, I got nowhere. No interest. And it got me thinking: Can Burning Man ever be green?

Evidently the Burning Man organization thinks it can. This year they announced next year's theme on the weekend of the burn -- four or five months earlier than usual: It's "The Green Man.":

Our theme concerns humanity's relationship to nature. Do we, as conscious beings, exist outside of nature's sway, or does its force impel us and inform the central root of who and what we are?

There's also a project by Burners Without Borders called "Cooling Man," where they're trying to offset the events carbon emissions by riding bikes and planting trees, but I'm not as impressed with it as I'd like to be. At their Web site, I calculated my greenhouse gas emissions (0.05 tons), then learned from the site that one tree absorbs 0.02 tons of GHGs. So does that mean I can counterbalance my incredibly dirty trip to Black Rock City by planting two trees in Los Angeles? What about the water required to nurture those trees, the maintenance they'll need to keep them healthy and pruned, the cost in resources of shipping that tree to the nursery, and my effort to bring it home? I'm not seeing it.

Jolly Roger had another idea: Why not create a Black Rock Alternative Energy Council, just as there's a Black Rock Arts Council to subsidize art BMorg likes?

Says Roger in an email to the Greening Man list:

[The Black Rock AEC] would fund projects that provide or show how to:
A. use less energy (for lighting or sound or evap)
B. Use alternative methods to power lighting or sound (or evap)
C. refrigeration
D. Evaporation system designs
E. motive power (art cars that are not gas/diesel)
F. how-tos (solar/wind/pedal)
G. classes on the playa
H. creation of sustainable stuff workshops
I. power for art

When Roger granted me permission to publish that list, he also warned me against any more proselytizing for alternative energy in other camps on the Playa:

Gospel is most often run away from really fast (remember when the adventists appear at your door?). That tends to be ignored on-playa. I tend toward: Hey,
try this cool thing, it's not that hard. And look how much fun it is. (and I keep a secret of
how educational and energy-saving it is). And try warm mild lemon tea with honey for your throat.

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