WASHINGTON — A Colorado man who set himself on fire in front of the Supreme Court on Friday in an apparent Earth Day protest against climate change has died, police said.

The Metropolitan Police Department of Washington, D.C., said that Wynn Bruce, 50, of Boulder, Colo., had died on 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 Mr. Bruce and that the self-immolation was a planned act of protest.

“This act is not suicide,” Dr. Kritee wrote on Twitter early Sunday morning. “This is a deeply fearless act of compassion to bring attention to climate crisis.”

She later added in an interview 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.”

Mr. Bruce had set himself on fire at the plaza in front of the Supreme Court at about 6:30 p.m. on 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 Mr. 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 skepticism 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.

Mr. 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 Dr. Kritee identified as Mr. Bruce’s had commemorated the death of Thich Nhat Hanh, an influential Zen Buddhist master and antiwar activist who died in January.

Source : http://.nytimes.com/2022/04/24/us/politics/climate-activist-self-immolation-supreme-court.html