Burning Man, an annual art and music festival held in the Nevada desert, was much wetter this year.
Heavy rain and floods over the weekend left approximately 70,000 festival-goers stranded, according to Axios. Controversial Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) said Sunday in an Infowars interview that the floods were an act of God.
“I want to talk about Burning Man for a minute,” Greene told Infowars host Alex Jones. “God has a way of letting everyone know who God is,” she added after Jones interjected.
Burning Man began in 1986 at Baker beach in San Francisco, Calif., to celebrate the Summer Solstice. To this day, the burning of an effigy of a man is still a big part of the festival.
“Burning Man is a network of people inspired by the values reflected in the Ten Principles and united in the pursuit of a more creative and connected existence in the world,” according to the festival website. “Throughout the year we work to build Black Rock City, home of the largest annual Burning Man gathering, and nurture the distinctive culture emerging from that experience.”
The Burning man principles are: radical inclusion, gifting, decommodification, radical self-reliance, radical self-expression, communal effort, civic responsibility, leaving no trace, participation, and immediacy. In the years since its inception, Burning Man has also been frequently referenced in popular culture.
This year, a driving ban was put in place as extreme weather impacted the festival. Heavy rains in the area came as a result the Southwest monsoon, said Axios. Multiple flash flood warnings were issued Saturday in the region. The festival was also delayed due to Hurricane Hilary, a storm that brought historic floods to Southern California.
“Please know that while conditions are improving and roads are drying, the playa is still muddy and may be difficult to navigate in some neighborhoods and down certain streets,” said a survival guide posted n the Burning Man website.
By Monday, the wait time to exit the site was still around seven hours “and climbing,” per an X post.
Greene’s comments about Burning Man came as part of a diatribe about those on the political left. She criticized support for the Black Lives Matter movement and people who supported measures to stop the spread of COVID-19, including wearing masks.
Additionally, she claimed that the people who were trapped at the festival this weekend were “probably being brainwashed that climate change is the cause of all of it.”
UCLA climate scientist Daniel Swain said in a recent X post that climate change is “probably” a factor in the severity of the flooding in the Black Rock desert this year.
“The heaviest downpours will increase almost everywhere in a warming climate,” he said.
According to Caltech, “multiple studies published in peer-reviewed scientific journals show that 97% or more of actively publishing climate scientists agree: climate-warming trends over the past century are extremely likely due to human activities.”
Despite what the overwhelming majority of experts agree on, Greene argued that the climate is always changing. She said she believes “this is the left’s new lie,” Greene told Jones.