A sad case of self-immolation with fossil fuels, to protest fossil fuels
A green activist who was a pioneering lawyer for gay and transgender rights — including in the infamous “Boys Don’t Cry” murder case — committed suicide by setting himself on fire Saturday morning in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park.
Attorney David Buckel in 2006APIn a gruesome protest against the ecological destruction of the earth, David Buckel, 60, left behind a charred corpse and a typed suicide note that said he was burning himself to death using “fossil fuel” to reflect how mankind was likewise killing itself, police sources said.
He left the note behind in a manila envelope marked “To The Police,” recovered from inside a black metal push cart he discarded at the scene.
Passersby were horrified to see Buckel’s blackened, prone remains.
“It was just lying there, on its back, knees slightly bent like someone would lie on the sand at the beach,” said Irena Ryjova, 44, who rollerbladed past at around 7 a.m., less than an hour after the immolation.
…
More recently, he worked as an urban gardener and ecologist with the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, helping run what he called the largest composting program in the country to use only renewable sources of energy.
“There’s no denying that sticking with renewable resources means a lot of elbow grease with pitchforks and shovels,” he wrote in a 2016 article on the garden website.
More here at the NYPost: https://nypost.com/2018/04/14/burned-body-inside-prospect-park-appears-to-be-suicide/
h/t to “Charles the moderator”
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Mentally ill activist lawyer
…Disco inferno…
Was this the first known auto-sacrifice to Gaia on behalf of unchanging climate for progeny?
The Church of Omnipotent Greenhouse In Warming should grant him martyrdom.
Judging from the majority of comments so far this man’s death did little more than further convince those holding the opposite view that the cause he espoused is unsound and dangerously false. I suspect his death will do little to convince those who are unsure to endorse his views. He was preaching to the choir and his sermon was incoherent. What a horrible, wasteful, fatal futility he ended up embracing.
Indeed.
I’ll just come out and say it. This guy wins the Darwin Award for stupidity and it’s one less gene stain in this feasting shit pit known as ecofacism.
Meh, you guys are way too polite.
I’m wondering why this has been printed on a site that prides itself in providing quality arguments and information around climate change? Is it to highlight the sadness of the suicide of a man who clearly believed what he was doing made sense, or to throw a bone to the rabid right who like nothing more than to mock those they don’t agree with? If it is the latter, it is pretty low.
Just as this man cried out to be heard, so are a lot of people on this site.
They see futility of death when the problems confronted by this man were either fixable, treatable inconsequential, or, in actual reality,good.
The parallel between extreme green views and self immolation seen in the desire not to have children, the sense of hopeless self worth that ‘I’ am the cause of the destruction of the planet,the ‘logical’ need to eliminate the ‘I’
, the hope that this sends a ‘message’.
The response is cynicism, sadness, derision and a sense of fatalistic conclusion that the catastrophists are
the engineers of their own delusions.
This cry from the heart of many bloggers has to be recognised,particularly by those who see catastrophe through the lens of every news bulletin, who, themselves are the victims of the narrative.
Compassion is a two edged obligation.
@ur momisugly Lewis …excellent response!
That phrase, “rabid right” is so popular. Perhaps because its alliteration makes it easy for the lunatic left to remember. “A plague on both your houses,” is quickly becoming my favorite quote.
It really amazes me how members of the left actually believe that they are the compassionate ones.
When it comes to soup kitchens, and offering help to the actual needy, nobody tops conservatives.
Leftists on the other hand believe that voting for the government to steal someone else’s money so that it can be spent on the poor is all they need to do.
As to attacking and murdering those who don’t agree with them. The left has racked up a victim list of over 250 million in just the last 100 years or so.
MarkW
“When it comes to soup kitchens, and offering help to the actual needy, nobody tops conservatives.”
Bollocks.
So you are out there helping the poor are you Mark? Somehow I doubt someone who sees the world so cynically would be the first to feed those in need. Anyway my comment was not about that it was about the motive for posting this. Seems to me it was set up to invite all the frothing green haters to put the boot in. And if you read the comments, it seems to have been successful.
Every program created by Democrats/liberals/progressives to “help” people in need has had the exact opposite effect, holding thousands upon thousands of people in perpetual poverty for decades, destroying the basic family structure of inner city communities and spreading dysfunction and hopelessness, all while actually helping a very tiny percentage of people.
As for pity, this man had the benefits of an excellent education, successful career before the bar and life in an open society in which he could live that life as he chose, and he pissed all that away. All so he could become a martyr for the false religion of Man Caused Globall Warmining. What a putz.
Liberals/progressives want “government” to help people, conservatives want people to help themselves.
Rob,
With all due respect, alt-right individuals have very little to do with actual conservatives. And, as someone who lives close to C-ville, and knows someone who was at that protest (on the “wrong” side) I can tell you that the views of that side are mostly foreign to me as a conservative. So…no. Sorry. Holding up that incident as an example of the right is false. Flat out incorrect.
rip
Or it highlights the life quandary he was put in by what thing he thought “made sense.” Perhaps it’s clarion call type warning to others who would follow his path into despair. A sense of despair, no less, that is based off disingenuous sources on the matter. Perhaps this serves as a warning to others that if they’re seriously considering an insane decision of this type, they need to step back and do a serious reassessment.
Old school, he had the decency to not take any innocent victims with him.
Rest in peace David.
Christianity has a taboo against suicide for a reason. And showing off one’s own death for the faith and putting the blame on others is even worse.
Perhaps the realization of how much it sucked trying to live w/o fossil fuels overcame his sensibilities and put him in a “no-win” position as an activist, railing agains the very thing that made like much easier.
A direct quote fro the man himself:
“There’s no denying that sticking with renewable resources means a lot of elbow grease with pitchforks and shovels,” he wrote in a 2016 article on the garden website.”
If some (… choose your noun…) decides to burn himself up in a blaze of glory to elicit sympathy from me ….. well, I can view it or respond a couple of different ways.
…..) Why didn’t he just jump from a bridge?
…..) It wasn’t what it is reported to be?
…..) He was an attention seeker to the max?
…..) He felt ‘left out ‘ because no one would grope him?
…..) He found out that he was going to be charged in the Russian Collusion Investigation?
…..) He was told that there were videos of him ‘peeing’ on other men in a bed in Russia in what was called a ‘golden showers’ moment but his ‘pee’ was clear from too much beer and ‘they’ wouldn’t publish it?
….. ) He planned a BBQ with special recipe and main course but no one came or chose to eat? A failed chef or poor planning?
—————————-
*****) What kind of BS got into this guys head? Who put it there? Are they culpable?
*****) Why should I be pressured to feel sorry for someone I’ve never heard of who does something really stupid or just wants my forced sympathy?
*****) Am I just being pragmatic and presenting some readers to view a different perspective void of emotion and forced PC response? Where is my safe space where I don’t have to read about some grotesque suicide and feel the need to endure a mental torment they have tried to force on me with their actions?
*****) Next time I see someone do something stupid or careless and smash their finger, can I console them by smiling and telling them it will feel much better when it quits hurting?
Willis
I also had a meditation moment recently
breadonthewater.co.za/2018/04/16/your-will-be-done-on-earth-as-it-is-in-heaven/
Perhaps Buckel was already dying of some or other disease and he’d rather wanted to die for an issue that he believed in. The real tragedy in this case is that he sacrificed himself for a cause that is a non issue. There really is no manmade global warming.
sorry, the full link is
http://breadonthewater.co.za/2018/04/16/your-will-be-done-on-earth-as-it-is-in-heaven/
To bad Buckel couldn’t talk hundreds of thousand of other tree huggers and root kissers to join him the Buckel Broil-a-thon…
This is the level of insanity greenies have achieved.
Just think what they’d be willing to do to you.
So let’s see… he started out as a lawyer, became radicalized into the CAGW religion and became a gardener… then when he realized that his CAGW religion was BS and the planet was actually experiencing its steepest decline in temperature in recorded history, he self-immolated as means of assuaging his cognitive dissonance brought about by the intrusion of reality upon his skewed little kook world.
He deserves, and should get, no respect from anyone. He was a kook who bought into a lie, then took the ultimate step to avoid reality.
It is one thing to douse yourself in gasoline, quite another to light the match.
Big Oil won: a downright opponent felt an ardent longing to leave this world using one of their most popular products instead of an “ecologically correct” one.