Direct Action

[K-Dog]

Wolfgang glues his paws to the road.  Good thing he did not go to block the burning man road.  Nevada Ranger Pork would have left skin on the ground.





Europe's climate activists face 'repressive tide'

An AI voice reads the article.


the source

[K-Dog]

It seems protestors that stopped traffic on the way to the annual fossil fuel extravaganza at Black Rock City this year get the last laugh.

 

[RE]

It seems protestors that stopped traffic on the way to the annual fossil fuel extravaganza at Black Rock City this year get the last laugh.

How is Burning Man a Fossil Fuel extravaganza?  Their Mission Statement is as follows:


The 10 Principles of Burning Man

Burning Man co-founder Larry Harvey wrote the 10 Principles in 2004 as guidelines for the newly-formed Regional Network. They were crafted not as a dictate of how people should be and act, but as a reflection of the community's ethos and culture as it had organically developed since the event's inception.

Radical Inclusion
Anyone may be a part of Burning Man. We welcome and respect the stranger. No prerequisites exist for participation in our community.

Gifting
Burning Man is devoted to acts of gift giving. The value of a gift is unconditional. Gifting does not contemplate a return or an exchange for something of equal value.

Decommodification
In order to preserve the spirit of gifting, our community seeks to create social environments that are unmediated by commercial sponsorships, transactions, or advertising. We stand ready to protect our culture from such exploitation. We resist the substitution of consumption for participatory experience.

Radical Self-reliance
Burning Man encourages the individual to discover, exercise and rely on their inner resources.
Join the conversation in the 10 Principles blog series.
Join the conversation in the 10 Principles blog series.

Radical Self-expression
Radical self-expression arises from the unique gifts of the individual. No one other than the individual or a collaborating group can determine its content. It is offered as a gift to others. In this spirit, the giver should respect the rights and liberties of the recipient.

Communal Effort
Our community values creative cooperation and collaboration. We strive to produce, promote and protect social networks, public spaces, works of art, and methods of communication that support such interaction.

Civic Responsibility
We value civil society. Community members who organize events should assume responsibility for public welfare and endeavor to communicate civic responsibilities to participants. They must also assume responsibility for conducting events in accordance with local, state and federal laws.

Leaving No Trace
Our community respects the environment. We are committed to leaving no physical trace of our activities wherever we gather. We clean up after ourselves and endeavor, whenever possible, to leave such places in a better state than when we found them.

Participation
Our community is committed to a radically participatory ethic. We believe that transformative change, whether in the individual or in society, can occur only through the medium of deeply personal participation. We achieve being through doing. Everyone is invited to work. Everyone is invited to play. We make the world real through actions that open the heart.

Immediacy
Immediate experience is, in many ways, the most important touchstone of value in our culture. We seek to overcome barriers that stand between us and a recognition of our inner selves, the reality of those around us, participation in society, and contact with a natural world exceeding human powers. No idea can substitute for this experience.


They are a little artsy-fartsy liberal woke types and somewhat wasteful with the temporary structures they burn down at the end, but not much worse than typical campers who go through a couple of tents every year.

RE

[K-Dog]

How do you build a city in the middle of the desert, and then take it all down and leave no trace?

Lots, and lots, and lots ... of fossil fuels.

63% of total festival emissions come from vehicle travel (people driving RVs from all over, then sitting and waiting in traffic for hours to get in the gates, then waiting in traffic for sometimes up to 8 hours in order to get out), while 27% come from people flying in/out, and only 10% comes from activities on the playa. The total? 100,000 tons of CO2. For a festival of one week.

Seven Circles, a coalition of organizations that includes Extinction Rebellion and Rave Revolution, made some simple demands of the Burning Man Organization, which hosts the annual desert party: "Ban private jets, single-use plastics, unnecessary propane burning, and unlimited generator use per capita at the nine day event in Black Rock City, Nevada."

The ban on private jets seems pretty straightforward.



Not all the Burners are 1% ers, but I'll guess that less than 1% of Burners punch a time clock.

[RE]

Well, since they don't actually land the Private Jets in the desert but at regular airports, how could you police this?  The Masters of the Universe who travel around in these devices use them to go everywhere, so all they gotta do is say they were in the neighborhood for a bizness meeting and decided to drop in the conference before or after it.  They actually arrive in a limo, not the jet.  Maybe they come in by chopper, you could ban those.

Otherwise, most of the complaints could be made about any week long climate conference where people go and spend a week in some mega conference hotel that has the HVAC running full time burning copious FFs to control the climate inside the conference meeting rooms.  At least at Burning Man they aren't running any air conditioners.

The whole idea of setting up a temporary city in the middle of a desert is of course stupid, but certainly no more stupid than setting up a permanent one like Las Vegas or Phoenix.  If you're going to protestBurning Man, you need to also protest against all the people using single use plastics in Phoenix 365 days a year.  They put up a lot more than 100,000 tons of CO₂, which is just a drop in the bucket really.  You also need to subtract off all the FFs the attendees would have burned at home during the week they spent in a tent at burning man.  I bet most of them burn more FFs in a normal week at home than they do while stuck out in the desert all week, where they walk to all the exhibits.

I realize this is all symbolic of course, but really WTF cares about Burning Man anyhow?  Now, if they set up a big Picket Line and glued themselves to the pavement around the Port of  Los Angeles to protest against all the container ships unloading there, that would be meaningful.  I bet one container ship puts as much CO₂ up into the atmosphere in a day as Burning Man does in a week.  That's just ONE of the hundreds unloaded in a week, which are all stuffed to the gills with single use plastic packaging materials.  Burning Man is a Flea in the FF burning parade while the Godzillas exhale huge volumes of CO₂ daily with every breath of the industrial machine.

RE

[Nearings Fault]

To me it matters because the whole burning man scene says it aspires to better while turning a blind eye to, or worse being oblivious about, their rampant consumption. Nobody pretends that Phoenix is making the world better burning man does. Protest is mostly symbolic and made to raise awareness. Burning man gets publicity so they are a good target to protest because you get heard.

[RE]

Burning man gets publicity so they are a good target to protest because you get heard.

If you put a kink in the Supply Chain at the Port of Long Beach, I think you would get heard even louder.

I just think it's hypocritical to single out the rampant consumption at Burning Man.when RC is present everywhere, including the environmental movement.  We've all heard the tales of Al Gore going to climate conferences in a private jet.  I've read about Greta getting sailboat rides from rich Yachties to transport her around between continents for climate actions, so how come nobody mentions all the fiberglass used to build those boats instead of flying on private jets?  Absolutely everything these days is Greenwashed, even Nukes these days have been revived by the crash cart of carbon free energy.  Never mind all the carbon burned in the mining and refining of the fuel or that nasty spent fuel disposal problem or the inevitability of another Chernobyl the more plants built insures.  Compared to all this non-stop bullshitting, the hypocrisy at Burning Man is insignificant.  Those domes they put up are good examples of affordable housing.The fact they burn all of the stuff at the end of it is a political statement of it's own.  I think they are perfectly aware of the waste involved here and it's part of what they are trying to demonstrate.

RE

[Nearings Fault]

Well differences of world view. I generally view all of our problems through the lens of personal over consumption. Fossil fuel companies have so much sway because we drive huge vehicles large distances without a thought giving them a huge market which gives th the power to distort our politics and world view. The LA port is only a symbol of our bottomless pit of consumption. It exists only to fill a niche. So, the problem to me starts with the self. With that worldview I find Burning man a symbol of the excess of our age and a fair target.

[RE]

Well differences of world view. I generally view all of our problems through the lens of personal over consumption. Fossil fuel companies have so much sway because we drive huge vehicles large distances without a thought giving them a huge market which gives th the power to distort our politics and world view. The LA port is only a symbol of our bottomless pit of consumption. It exists only to fill a niche. So, the problem to me starts with the self. With that worldview I find Burning man a symbol of the excess of our age and a fair target.

My World View is governed by asking the question "What would do the greatest good for the most people?".  In this case, my answer is "Boycotting the Port of Long Beach outweighs boycotting Burning Man."  The Logic of Mr. Spock. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xa6c3OTr6yA

RE

[K-Dog]

Seven Circle Alliance

Above is the website for the protest group.  Below is a screenshot of the website.



I had to construct the image from several screenshots.

There are three links in the page.

Sign The Petition

The about link is show in the screenshot.  The last link is:

Donate

[Nearings Fault]

I don't know if that is logic. So by extending that worldview spraying defoliant on South American coca plantations is a good way to get Americans to stop snorting cocaine. To me fighting consumerism by targeting only producers of consumption items will never work. People need to grow and turn off the over consumption in houses, food, vehicles, electronics, travel and so on. You want the market to produce good durable goods? Then buy a long durable good once or twice in a lifetime not cheap ones yearly. Buy a phone that you can change the battery in, change the hard drive in that computer even if financially it makes no sense. Cook at home, pay more for food you buy from people with faces, avoid chain restaurants, travel for 2 months once a decade not quarterly for long weekends... It's where I prefer to spend my energy.

[RE]

First in reply to K-Dog:

Their request are very reasonable, and I can't see why they wouldn't implement them.  I doubt that many of the attandees fly in Private Jets, but they can say they will kick them out if they find out they are using one as soon as the Annual COP Climate Conference bans them.  They can argue that some propane generators are necessary, just as some conference hotel HVAC is necessary in Phoenix.  They can set a limit of say 1 5gal tank of propane per festival attendee.

To NG:

Spraying defoliant would be a good way to reduce cocaine usage.  It would drive the cost up into the stratosphere.  Not very environmentally friendly though.  They also don't really want to do that, because the drug trade is very profitable, and so is the "war on drugs" for the arms manufacturers.

Are there any phones left you can change the battery on?  My Galaxy Megas which I had for an astounding 6 years of use did, but none of the motorolas or samsungs I have purchased since have ones you can change yourself.  I know no Apples have replaceable batteries.

People generally do buy more durable goods, if they can afford them and it makes financial sense.  People who can afford them buy Volvos and Mercedes because they last longer in general than GM & Ford.  Far as paying more for food goes, local grown organic Alaska eggs are triple the price of WA state eggs, already pretty pricy.  If your food budget is tight, that is a Bridge Too Far.  This is something only upper middle class people can suggest as a solution to our problems.

Personally, I no longer own any carz, I use my own super economical EV Cripple Scooter and Public Transportation.  My typical apartment size is 600 sq feet, currently I live in a room about half that size until I get called off one of the waiting lists I am on for affordable housing for cripples.  I don't personally need to eat much because I don't burn a lot of calories building 1500 sq ft McMansions for people or putting up solar installations and I almost never eat out.  I went to a Chinese restaurant once last year and ordered a large WonTon soup. 2/3rds of which I brought home.  This year I went once to a Jap restaurant and ordered a Sashimi Bento Box.  My computers are all at least 3 years old, the oldest about 7 now I think, my only still functional Windows XP All-in-One Dell.  I have by far I am sure the lowest energy footprint of anyone in this group, and if everyone followed my example in the FSoA, our total energy consumption would rival that of Africa.  However, my leading by example is not doing a whole heck of a lot of good, even here.  I don't think leading by example is working as a solution.

On the other hand, I think blockading the Port of Long Beach or better yet Torpedoing some container ships would make a BIG difference. lol.



RE

[Nearings Fault]

I am of course not taking aim at you personally. Our current house works out to about 550 sq ft per occupant. It does have an attached garage not in those figures and about 300 sq ft of unfinished basement. It was built to far outlast us and to be divided into a second dwelling when the beasts break free of the nest. I expect we will either become evil landlords or move on to something smaller when the time comes. That in itself is another source of grief. People not knowing when to downsize.Food is an interesting one.Have you ever thought that that WA egg should cost the same as the Alaska egg? If you want to take aim at something aim at artificially low food prices making it impossible to compete locally. So those are some of my battle grounds. I don't like the idea that only middle class people can afford to think long term that is dismissive. I believe that long term thinking starting early on small things leads to greater savings over a life time.

[K-Dog]

On the other hand, I think blockading the Port of Long Beach or better yet Torpedoing some container ships would make a BIG difference. lol.

* Or it could just piss people off and get you killed when the FEDs smoke your ass.  Protesting Burning Man is a lot safer.  I doubt the protesters expected NAZI tribal police. 

The pickup that smashed through the barricade was paid for by PREVIOUS Burning Men.

Yes PREVIOUS Burning Men paid for the battering ram, and you read it here first. Nobody else has figured it out?

Nixon is a census-designated place (CDP) in Washoe County, Nevada, USA.[2] The population was 374 at the 2010 census. It is part of the Reno–Sparks Metropolitan Statistical Area. It is the seat of tribal government of the Paiute Pyramid Lake Indian Reservation and home to the tribe's Museum and Visitor Center.

To get to Burning man through Reno you go through Nixon.  Burning man is bank for the tribe.  Corruption of Native American tribes is a skill white Americans are very accomplished at, so do the math.  The tribe may even vote Trump for all we know.



* Not the way to start a revolution.  A new cultural hegemony must be forged before such an event can trigger lasting change.  A vanguard must have popular support or qualitative change can't endure.

[RE]

* Or it could just piss people off and get you killed when the FEDs smoke your ass.  Protesting Burning Man is a lot safer.  I doubt the protesters expected NAZI tribal police.

Safer, definitely, but safe doesn't start Revolutions.

* Not the way to start a revolution.  A new cultural hegemony must be forged before such an event can trigger lasting change.  A vanguard must have popular support or qualitative change can't endure.

You're not gonna forge a new cultural hegemony requesting Burning Man attendees fly in by commercial jets either.  Sinking a container ship on the other hand is a revolutionary act.

If everybody would just be nice and live small like me we wouldn't need a revolution.  Unfortunately, most people will not willingly live as small as I do.  In fact *I* would not willingly live this small.  I only do so because I am an impoverished cripple. lol

RE