Mr Bruce ran a portrait photo studio in Boulder, and his social media account was filled with posts about the environment and Buddhism.
He also left a cryptic post on his Facebook page with a fire emoji and the date of his death 4/22/2022 a year before his death.
Dr K. Kritee, a Buddhist priest from Boulder, wrote on Twitter that Mr Bruce had been planning to self-immolate for at least a year.
“This guy was my friend. He meditated with our sangha,” she said.
“This act is not suicide. This is a deeply fearless act of compassion to bring attention to climate crisis. We are piecing together info but he had been planning it for atleast one year. #wynnbruce I am so moved.”
He is not the first climate martyr and he won’t be the last. People are only going to become more and more desperate and examples like this will become more and more common.
the fucking hill article linked doesn’t even mention WHY he did it wow
@oftengruntled No joke, I didn’t find a single mainstream news article yesterday acknowledging this as an act of protest instead of a random suicide. A couple more articles have come out today clarifying his motives based on his social media posts and words from his friends (here’s one), but the story probably would have been buried if the tweet above hadn’t gone viral.
Some folks are arguing that this is a Werther effect case where they don’t want to inspire copy cats by reporting on it, but like… I’m sorry this needs to be a wake up call. Climate inaction is slow suicide by self-immolation. People should know about Wynn Bruce not to copy his particular method of protest but to understand that we need to protest right now and however we can.
