Brooklyn lawyer immolates himself to protest air pollution/climate change

Prospect Park, Brooklyn
Photo: Rob Hoey

A U.S. lawyer, David Buckel, set himself on fire in a New York City park to protest climate change. In the process Buckel added to the air pollution and may have actually caused a microscopic warming of the Earth, particularly around Prospect Park.

In a suicide note found near to where his remains were found, Buckel, 60, said he immolated himself using fossile fuel to symbolize what he said was the damage human beings were doing to the Earth.

Mr. Buckel was presumably mentally ill and a Democrat . . . but I repeat myself.

Buckel said most people now breathe bad air and many died prematurely.

Buckel was known for his legal work for gay, lesbian and people with gender dyphoric disorder, the latter group also being quite suicidal. He also worked with environmental groups but killed himself anyway.

"Pollution ravages our planet, oozing inhabitability via air, soil, water and weather," he wrote in his suicide note. He didn't mention that the United States far exceeds most other nations in air quality and regulations and that there are no clear findings as to what level of environmental influence human activity plays in climate or what has to be done. Certainly not starting unnecessary fires.

Not allowing any tragedy to be wasted, [to paraphrase Saul Alinsky's "Rules for Radicals"] the New York Times quoted his note which was also emailed to several news outlets shortly before his charred body was found.

"My early death by fossil fuel reflects what we are doing to ourselves," the lawyer said from the grave, rather than a mental institution.

Buckel was the lead lawyer in the Nebraska case in which cops were found to have failed to protect Brandon Teena, a transgender teen who had been raped and assaulted and later murdered in Nebraska. Teena was the subject of the 1999 film Boys Don't Cry.

Photo: NY Daily News

Buckel also worked as marriage project director and senior counsel at Lambda legal, which fights for LGBT rights.

It is really sad that he killed himself, but that he killed himself to make a statement about the environment indicates that it was more than the environment that can kill us. I believe he was mentally ill and highly depressed.

And what a painfully horrible way to commit suicide.


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