The Metropolitan Police Department of
Washington, DC, said that Wynn Bruce, 50, of Boulder, Colorado, had died
Saturday from his injuries after being airlifted to a hospital following the
incident. Members of his family could not be reached immediately for comment. Kritee Kanko, a climate scientist at the
Environmental Defense Fund and a Zen Buddhist priest in Boulder, said that she
is a friend of Bruce and that the self-immolation was a planned act of protest. “This act is not suicide,” Kritee wrote on
Twitter early Sunday morning. “This is a deeply fearless act of compassion to
bring attention to climate crisis.” She later added that she was not completely
certain of his intentions, but that “people are being driven to extreme amounts
of climate grief and despair” and that “what I do not want to happen is that
young people start thinking about self-immolation.” Bruce had set himself on fire at the plaza in
front of the Supreme Court at about 6:30 pm Friday, police and court officials
said. A video posted to Twitter by a Fox News reporter showed a National Park
Service helicopter landing in the plaza to airlift Bruce to a nearby hospital. The court had heard arguments in late February
on an important environmental case that could restrict or even eliminate the
Environmental Protection Agency’s authority to control pollution. The court’s
conservative majority had voiced scepticism of the agency’s authority to
regulate carbon emissions, suggesting that a decision by the justices could
deal a sharp blow to the Biden administration’s efforts to address climate
change. Bruce, who identified as Buddhist, set himself
on fire in an apparent imitation of Vietnamese monks who burned themselves to
death in protest during the Vietnam War. A Facebook account that Kritee
identified as Bruce’s had commemorated the death of Thich Nhat Hanh, an
influential Zen Buddhist master and anti-war activist who died in January. Thich Nhat Hanh, in a letter he wrote in 1965
to the Rev Dr Martin Luther King Jr, had idolised those monks. Kritee cited
that letter in another tweet on Bruce’s death Sunday morning. “The press spoke then of suicide, but in the
essence, it is not. It is not even a protest,” Thich Nhat Hanh wrote of the
monks, adding that “to burn oneself by fire is to prove that what one is saying
is of the utmost importance. There is nothing more painful than burning
oneself. To say something while experiencing this kind of pain is to say it
with utmost courage, frankness, determination, and sincerity.” David Buckel, a prominent civil rights lawyer
turned environmental advocate, also set himself on fire in Brooklyn’s Prospect
Park in 2018 to protest climate change and died. In a letter beforehand, Buckel
alluded to the spiritual roots of self-immolation in protests, including in
Tibet. Bruce had, on his own Facebook page nearly
three weeks before his act, recently edited a 2021 comment — under his post in
2020 warning of “irreversible” climate change — to include the date of his
planned self-immolation, with a fire emoji. The apparent announcement of his
plans was buried in his account timeline. Other posts from Bruce’s Facebook account
going back to April 2020 criticised “war profiteers,” President Donald Trump
and collective inaction in the face of a worsening climate crisis. He also
praised young climate activist Greta Thunberg, quoted King, and as recently as
March spoke of the “compassion” of Ukrainian refugees. Kritee said that the last time Bruce had
communicated with her was in a Facebook message he had sent in January, asking
if she had seen his post about Thunberg. She added that if she or any other
Buddhist teacher in Boulder had known of his plan to set himself on fire, they
would have discouraged him from doing so. There have been previous instances of public
self-immolation in Washington. Arnav Gupta burned himself in front of the White
House in 2019 and later died of his injuries. A motive in that case was never
determined. Mohamed Alanssi, a Yemeni-born FBI informant, set himself on fire outside
the White House in 2004 in protest of his treatment by the government, but he
survived. Norman R Morrison, a Quaker man, burned himself to death outside the
Pentagon in 1965 in protest of the Vietnam War. ©2022 The New York Times Company