February 19
The Ethics of Direct Political Action (or, alternately, Civil Disobedience)
Tim DeChristopher, Environmental Activist
Introduction: Jim Westwater, President, Utah Valley Sierra Forum
4‑5:15 p.m., Timpanogos Room, UVU Library
(Part of the Utah Democracy Project)
THIS EVENT IS FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC
"What I did no doubt puts me at significant risk, including prison. But my
future was already at significant risk. As we get closer and closer to the
point of too late, we have less and less to lose from resisting. Accepting
the true depth of the climate crisis is extremely scary, but the purpose of
fear is to motivate us to action. Many of us have sat around countless times
saying how much we needed someone to do something. If I am not willing to
take a stand for my generation, then who will? This year I have come to
terms with the idea that I might be my own best hope to defend my future.
Hopefully all of us will realize that we are the ones we have been waiting
for."
—Tim DeChristopher, Environmental Activist
FROM THE SALT LAKE TRIBUNE:
He didn't pour sugar into a bulldozer's gas tank. He didn't spike a tree or
set a billboard on fire. But wielding only a bidder's paddle, a University
of Utah student just as surely monkey-wrenched a federal oil- and gas-lease
sale Friday, ensuring that thousands of acres near two southern Utah
national parks won't be opened to drilling anytime soon.
Tim DeChristopher, 27, faces possible federal charges after winning bids
totaling about $1.8 million on more than 10 lease parcels that he admits he
has neither the intention nor the money to buy -- and he's not sorry.
"I decided I could be much more effective by an act of civil disobedience,"
he said during an impromptu streetside news conference during an afternoon
blizzard. "There comes a time to take a stand."
The Sugar House resident -- questioned and released after disrupting a U.S.
Bureau of Land Management lease auction of 149,000 acres of public land in
scenic southern and eastern Utah -- said he came to the BLM's state office
in Salt Lake City to join about 200 other activists in a peaceful protest
outside the building Friday morning. But then he registered with the BLM as
representing himself and went to the auction room.
There, he thought about the times he has marched, fired off letters to his
congressmen, signed petitions and supported environmental organizations --
all to no avail.
"What the environmental movement has been doing for the past 20 years hasn't
worked," DeChristopher said. "It's time for a conflict. There's a lot at
stake."
Plainclothes Salt Lake City police officers were in the room during the
auction, the last to be held under the Bush administration. BLM spokeswoman
Mary Wilson said the agency requested law-enforcement help due to perceived
threats over the hotly disputed sale.
Another man also was detained and questioned about the possibility that he
and DeChristopher had committed federal offenses by trying to impede the
bidding process, BLM officials said. That man registered as Kent Boardman,
of Salt Lake City.
Since the Election Day announcement of the lease sale, preservationists,
conservationists, archaeologists, business owners, river runners, anglers
and hunters have registered objections to the BLM's plans to allow drilling
in some of Utah's most scenic redrock desert.
They challenged proposed leases near Arches National Park, the White River,
the greater Desolation Canyon region, Labyrinth Canyon, the benches east of
Canyonlands National Park, Nine Mile Canyon, the Book Cliffs and the Deep
Creek Mountains.
Objections also have come from the National Park Service, members of
Congress and John Podesta, the head of President-elect Barack Obama's
transition team, who said the lease sale should be halted or altered to
accommodate environmental concerns.
In the face of the outrage, the BLM pulled back from its original proposal
to lease 360,000 acres. Friday's sale included 149,000 acres in Carbon,
Duchesne, Emery, Garfield, Grand and San Juan counties. The BLM said it sold
116 of 131 parcels (including DeChristopher's bids) for a total of $7.5
million.
Kathleen Sgamma, director of government affairs for the Independent
Petroleum Association of Mountain States, said it was unusual to see a lease
list trimmed so drastically. "The BLM was under a lot of pressure,
unfairly," she said.
The auction had been under way for a couple of hours when energy company
representatives became suspicious of a man wearing an old red down parka
after he won bids on more than 10 parcels numbered consecutively, all around
Arches and Canyonlands.
They told BLM officials that the man, brandishing bidding paddle No. 70 and
unknown to the regular buyers, also seemed to be bidding up on parcels,
raising prices on leases that others eventually won.
The auctioneer took a break and police asked the man, later identified as
DeChristopher, to leave the room. After questioning him for more than an
hour behind closed doors, BLM and law-enforcement officials requested
assistance from the U.S. Attorney's Office.
The federal attorneys' spokeswoman, Melodie Rydalch, confirmed the office
was conducting an investigation, but declined to provide more details.
During the confusion that followed DeChristopher's removal, Sgamma said she
had seen Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance attorney David Garbett
"communicating" with DeChristopher during the auction. She questioned
whether SUWA had been acting in concert with the man the BLM dubbed a
"nuisance bidder."
Garbett, however, said he gave DeChristopher his business card and asked him
to call SUWA after the holidays because he had won parcels included in a
federal lawsuit SUWA had filed against the lease sale.
After the auction, Kent Hoffman, the BLM's state deputy director for lands
and minerals, announced there had been a bogus bidder. But the false bidder
was "on the hook to pay," Hoffman said.
"Good," said a woman in the auction room. "Make them pay."
Hoffman said successful bidders who believed their offers had been run up
illegally due could withdraw their bids.
BLM official Terry Catlin said the agency didn't want to reopen the bidding
on the parcels DeChristopher snagged unless all interested parties were able
to compete for the leases. That means the parcels won't be available again
until at least February -- after Obama takes office -- during the next
scheduled auction.
DeChristopher, who acknowledged upping other bids by about $500,000, said he
would be willing to go to jail to defend his generation's prospects in light
of global climate disruption and other environmental threats.
"If that's what it takes," he said.
--By Patty Henetz, The Salt Lake Tribune, Dec 19, 2008
*****
David R. Keller, Ph.D.
Director, Center for the Study of Ethics
Utah Valley University
801.863.6363
http://ethicscenter.info/
