The Site of an Environmentalist’s Deadly Act of Protest

On a Saturday morning in the spring of 2018, an environmentalist and former L.G.B.T.Q.-rights lawyer named David Buckel stood on a berm of grass in Prospect Park, doused himself in gasoline, and set himself on fire. Minutes before, he had e-mailed prominent media outlets a lengthy cri de coeur against the environmental devastation we are daily wreaking on the Earth. “Most humans on the planet now breathe air made unhealthy by fossil fuels, and many die early deaths as a result—my early death by fossil fuel reflects what we are doing to ourselves,” he wrote.

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Buckel’s death succeeded in provoking a brief flurry of press coverage. But then the media cycle moved on. (“A Man Set Himself on Fire. We Barely Noticed.” an Op-Ed headline in the Times read.) Unlike other famous self-immolation protests, such as that of the Vietnamese monk Thich Quang Duc, in 1963, or the Tunisian produce vender Mohamed Bouazizi, in 2010, Buckel’s death was not photographed, and thus the grisly scene did not sear itself into the public consciousness. This was perhaps by design: Buckel chose to end his life early in the morning, as the day broke, seemingly to minimize the number of witnesses. Next to his remains, first responders discovered an identification lanyard and an additional handwritten note directed at them. The note concluded, “I apologize to you for the mess.”

Read the story from The NewYorker by Chris Wiley - “The Site of an Environmentalist’s Deadly Act of Protest.”