Burning Man is an iconic annual, week-long get-away for people “seeking the personally transformative experiences of self-realization” at a site in the northwest Nevada desert. Some 80,000 people show up, including hippies, peaceniks, and celebrities, but also many middle-class Americans who just want to get away from the hustle and bustle of 21st-century living for a while. We have friends who attend regularly.

But this year the trek to the two-lane highway to Burning Man was barricaded by climate activists. They parked a 28-foot trailer in the middle of the road and chained themselves to the truck while demanding Burning Man ban private jets, plastics, and the use of propane.

One of the wackos was Will Livernois, of Scientist Rebellion, who lectured: “We have to shift away from Burning Man’s green capitalism and focus on degrowth.”

(As an aside, we’ve made the case that “green capitalism” — i.e., the trillions of dollars funneled to the climate change industrial complex — is the driving force behind the climate change movement. What this has to do with the Burning Man festival is beyond us.

https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2023/aug/28/burning-man-protest-climate-change-environment

In a rich irony, the climate activists were criticized by the Paiute Tribe, which owns the area. Man Chong, one of those eventually arrested, asked: “What is being late to Burning Man in comparison to having your entire planet on fire?”

Incidentally, one of the rituals at Burning Man is that the “party culminates in a symbolic burning of a large wooden effigy, after which all the attendees meticulously clean up after themselves.” Left-wing protesters almost never do that!

This story has a happy ending as you can see from this dramatic police intervention: