Dear Family, Friends, Campmates, and Free Spirits,
It is with sorrow and finality that Radar and I have decided we cannot go to Burning Man this year. For anyone reading this who hasn't been to Burning Man, insert [go home to see my mother].
The world is on the verge of the most dire of ecological catastrophes, the end of our planet’s ability to be a home to us and our children and our children’s children.
We wanted to bike out to Black Rock City, but now we realize we are not going to be able to do that. It's 2500 miles. We have local obligations, jobs even, gardens. So now we know we have to give up this thing that we love—the beautiful, 10-principled Burning Man celebration—in order to avoid creating more of a poison we despise—fossil fuel pollution.
We have been experiencing August weather in May and June. Since May, our family in Arizona is already coping with 100+ degrees. Every time someone decides that their consumption of fossil fuels is excusable, the last member of some obscure species succumbs to the heat or the flooding or its inability to digest plastic, and we all lose.
Read Greta Thunberg's works! We’ve taken her advice and we're listening to the scientists.
The science is dire!
This article -- that shows how instead of slowing down, our emissions output is speeding up — is from April 20, 2024. (Let me know if you get stopped by their pay wall...)
And this from the United Nations Secretary General, António Guterres — that documents our slide into a 1.63° C rise above pre-industrial carbon emissions levels — is from June 5, 2024.
So — with tears in our eyes — we have decided to change our plans.
This is the direction we want to go: "Paris has closed more than 100 streets to motor vehicles, tripled parking fees for SUVs, removed roughly 50,000 parking spots, and constructed more than 1,300 kilometers (800 miles) of bike lanes since Mayor Anne Hidalgo took office in 2014."
Instead we live in New York, where the governor has just shut down NYC's plan for congestion pricing because, you know, her friends don't want to be inconvenienced. For these people, money today matters more than clean water in the future.
We need to stay here and figure out what to do next. Sipi Flamand, an Atikamekw thinker I have just learned about, has some good ideas... So does Françoise Vergès... I need to get smarter....
Yours in Civic Responsibility and Grief,
Ducky and Radar
Comments