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Wynn Alan Bruce, a 50-year-old man from Colorado lit himself on fire last Friday in front of the Supreme Court building in protest of the government’s lack of action in matters of climate change.

According to officials, Bruce self-immolated around 6:30 p.m. and was airlifted to a hospital where he succumbed to his severe injuries the next day. Bruce was a photographer and a Buddhist from Boulder, Colorado, and is suspected to have been planning the act for a long time.

“This act is not suicide,” wrote Dr. Kritee Kanko, a climate scientist and Zen Buddhist priest. “This is a deeply fearless act of compassion to bring attention to climate crisis.”

In an interview with The New York Times, Dr. Kanko said that although people are being driven to “climate grief and despair”, she did not want young people “to start thinking about self-immolation.”

Bruce did not leave behind a manifesto explaining the reason behind his self-immolation, but his Facebook account is dedicated to matters of the environment, leading officials to believe climate activism was the reason behind the self-immolation.

Under a post made in 2020 about global warming, Bruce commented “4-1-1”, which was later edited to add a fire emoji. The comment was edited again to “4/22/2022”, the date of Earth Day.

Bruce also posted a photo in January commemorating Thich Nhat Hanh, a Vietnamese anti-war activist and Buddhist monk. Hanh is well known for his letter to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1965, in which he explained the legacy of self-immolating Vietnamese monks. In the letter, Hanh writes that “to burn oneself by fire is to prove that what one is saying is of the utmost importance,” explaining that self-immolation shows the highest form of sincerity for a cause.