Man who died outside Supreme Court raises complicated questions, calls attention to 'climate grief'

On April 20 around 4 p.m., Wynn Bruce knocked on his neighbor’s door in Boulder, Colorado, asking to be driven to a park-and-ride bus station, saying he was meeting a meditation group in Denver.

Chris King said he dropped off Bruce, who was wearing shorts, a T-shirt and carrying a backpack and offered no hint of what was to come.

Two days later, Bruce, 50, a climate activist and Buddhist, sat down in front of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington and set himself on fire on Earth Day in what friends and family called a climate change protest.

Bruce left no explanation. His death stirred debate on social media over the possible nexus of faith and activism, some expressing sympathy for what they viewed as a sacrificial act that reflects historic self-immolation protests by Buddhist monks. Others argued that those views glorify suicide.

CLIMATE POINT: Subscribe to USA TODAY’s free weekly newsletter on climate change, the environment and the weather

It also underscored concerns over “climate grief,” an anxiety that mental health experts said increases feelings of fear and hopelessness.

Bruce died weeks after a dire United Nations report about the urgent need to curb the increasing impacts of global warming. U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres declared that empty government pledges have “put us firmly on track toward an unlivable world.”

“We do see a tremendous amount of eco-anxiety,” said Elizabeth Haase, an associate professor of psychiatry at the University of Nevada School of Medicine who has studied the impact of global warming on mental health. “There are a lot of people who can feel quite isolated in their hopelessness about climate change and their grief about it.”

OPINION: Could we save Earth if we treated it like a child? We are in crisis and need to heal the planet.

Exactly what triggered Bruce’s act remains unclear. His father, who lives outside Minneapolis and spoke with his son days before his death, said Bruce was on disability because of teenage traumatic brain injury but seemed to be doing well.

“This is not a coincidence that it took place on Earth Day, at all. I think it was very much a purposeful decision on his part to act on his beliefs,” Douglas Bruce told USA TODAY. “And he felt this was going to be of value to you and to me and to everybody else.”

Douglas Bruce said his son tried to light himself on fire in 2017 at the World Trade Center in New York. He was quickly stopped and hospitalized, he said, and Douglas cared for his son in New York before flying back to Colorado with him to organize therapy. He said his son never shared why he did it.

Who was Wynn Bruce?

In the days since his death, a portrait of the Colorado resident has begun to emerge from those who knew him.

Growing up in Minnesota as an only child, Wynn Bruce and his father took canoe trips near the north shore of Lake Superior and the boundary waters, Douglas Bruce said. “I think his concern for climate and the environment has some beginnings there,” he said.

Bruce suffered a traumatic brain injury at age 18 in a car accident in Florida, where he'd moved to live with his mother, his father said. His friend in the car with him died, and the injury left Bruce with lasting effects on how he processed information, his father said.

MORE AND MORE AMERICANS ARE DYING BY SUICIDE: What are we missing?

Bruce studied photography at the Metropolitan State University of Denver, according to a LinkedIn profile.

Friends, including King, who “shared a wall” in side-by-side apartments with Bruce for 20 years and saw him daily, described him as a friendly and upbeat presence who rode his bike around Boulder and took photographs, worked retail and food jobs and enjoyed Buddhist retreats.

Another friend, Marco DeGaetano, who often met Bruce at a natural grocery store, said Bruce stood out for his kindness to members of their Denver Unitarian church who were struggling with mental illness.

Bruce loved the outdoors, Douglas said, and they went climbing four years ago on a 14,000-foot Colorado mountain.

​​On Facebook, Bruce wrote about following the spiritual tradition of forms of Buddhism and praised Vietnamese monk Thich Nhat Hanh, a leader of engaged Buddhism, around the time of his death in January.

Johnmark Wiley, 42, of Pueblo, said he knew Bruce from online environmental forums, where Bruce engaged in debate about climate change and expressed frustration about government inaction.

“He was very vocal about people needing to be 'woke up' about climate change before it's too late. I think part of him started to feel like it was already too late,” he said. “He felt that we had gotten to the point that the science was undeniable and irrefutable. Yet lawmakers, both Republican and Democrat, refuse to take enough action to make even the slightest difference.”

Why suicide? Why the Supreme Court?

A Facebook page with Bruce’s name included a post in 2020 referencing climate change with a comment that read, "4-1-1 (fire emoji) 4/22/2022.”

Police said Bruce walked up to the plaza of the Supreme Court around 6:30 p.m. April 22, sat down and set himself ablaze. Police officers responded but were unable to extinguish the blaze in time to save him. No information that could show a motive was found, officials said.

It wasn’t clear why Bruce chose the Supreme Court. In February, the court heard arguments in a climate case over whether the Environmental Protection Agency has authority to regulate carbon emissions from power plants.

The act was reminiscent of self-immolations in Buddhist history: In 1963, Thich Quang Duc, a Vietnamese monk, sat cross-legged and burned himself to death at a Saigon intersection to protest the persecution of Buddhists by the South Vietnamese government.

SUICIDE LEAVES US ASKING 'WHY?' In new memoir, USA TODAY's Laura Trujillo searches for answers

YOU CAN TALK ABOUT SUICIDAL THOUGHTS AND DEPRESSION: USA TODAY editor shares advice after her mother's death by suicide.

Kritee Kanko, a Boulder-area Zen Buddhist priest who said she was Bruce’s friend, wrote on Twitter the day after his death that the self-immolation was “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 at least one year. #wynnbruce I am so moved.”

That set off a fierce debate among Twitter users, some of whom called it a suicide that did little for climate change. “Staying alive is a better way to fight climate crisis,” one poster wrote. Another wrote, “Don’t romanticize suicide.”

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention considers suicide a public health problem. The overall number of suicides in 2020 was 3% lower than in 2019 after increasing steadily from 2003 through 2018.

On April 25, Kanko signed a letter with other Buddhist teachers at the Rocky Mountain Ecodharma Retreat Center, which Wynn frequented, stating that “none of the Buddhist teachers in the Boulder area knew about his plans to self-immolate on this Earth Day. If we had known about his plans, we would have stopped him in any way possible.”

They said, “We have never talked about self-immolation, and we do not think self-immolation is a climate action. Nevertheless, given the dire state of the planet and worsening climate crisis, we understand why someone might do that. There has been self-immolation in Buddhist history to highlight atrocities committed against Tibetan and Vietnamese people. But that is not something that we would ever encourage. We hope we can hear Wynn’s message without condoning his method.”

Fears of climate change have widespread impacts on mental health, according to some reports and research.

In 2017, an American Psychological Association report highlighted the growth of fatalism and fear over climate change. “The tolls on our mental health are far-reaching. They induce stress, depression and anxiety,” it said.

COULD EATING BUG POWDER AND FUNGUS MEAT HELP FIGHT CLIMATE CHANGE? Yes, but there are easier ways

Last year, a survey by researchers at Stanford, New York University and other institutions found climate change and worries of government inaction caused anxiety and anger for 16- to 25-year-olds in 10 countries. More than 50% of the 10,000 people polled said they felt sad, anxious, angry, powerless, helpless and guilty, and more than 45% said their feelings about climate change negatively affected their daily life.

“It's important to remember to balance your individual sense of responsibility and your individual emotions about your relationship to it with an awareness that this is a collective thing that is happening and that you can take collective action," said Haase, the psychiatry professor.

April Lyons, a psychotherapist who attended therapeutic dance classes with Bruce, told the Daily Camera she was frustrated by comments on social media suggesting Bruce took his own life because of mental illness.

Douglas Bruce, who said he talked to his son by phone once or twice every week, said he believed his son's action was rooted in his concern for people.

“This may not have been a choice that I would have made," he said, choking back tears. "But it was a choice that he made. And I want to respect that and honor it, because it was his choice."

If you or someone you know may be struggling with suicidal thoughts, you can call the U.S. National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 800-273-TALK (8255) any time day or night, or chat online. Crisis Text Line provides free, 24/7, confidential support via text message to people in crisis when they dial 741741.

Contributing: The Associated Press

Chris Kenning is a national news writer. Reach him at ckenning@gannett.com or follow him on Twitter @chris_kenning

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Wynn Bruce death outside Supreme Court stirs debate over climate grief