Activist DeChristopher speaks in Santa Fe

By Lora Lucero

Tim DeChristopher admits that he didn’t really plan to purchase 22,000 acres near Moab and the Canyon Lands National Park in Utah when he entered the oil and gas auction on Dec. 17, 2008.

His goal—to creatively disrupt the process by just speaking his mind – was itself disrupted when he was asked if he wanted to be a bidder. Seizing the opportunity, Tim became bidder No. 70. On March 3, 2011, a jury found him guilty of making false statements and violating the Onshore Oil and Gas Leasing Reform Act. Tim faces up to 10 years in prison and a $750,000 fine, and expects to be sentenced in July.

At the invitation of New Energy Economy, DeChristopher spoke to 200 to 300 people in Santa Fe on June 13. Although I admire his courage and spontaneity, I was not convinced that civil disobedience is an effective way to make meaningful change. After listening to Tim, I am now convinced that more people—myself included—must follow in his footsteps.
DeChristopher acknowledges that while the prospect of going to prison is terrifying, “staying on the path that we are on now, that to me is a more terrifying situation.”
Check out Tim’s Peaceful Uprising

The time for civil disobedience, direct action, creative disruption, whatever we call it, has come. Sierra Club members know the dire threat our planet is facing from climate change. We also know there is an important role for inside action, such as influencing Congress to pass the Waxman-Markey Climate Change Bill in 2009.

Working from the inside must be balanced with disrupting from the outside. There is a legitimate and urgent role for peaceful civil disobedience when (1) our current elected officials have failed to act after repeated calls for action; (2) planetary survival trumps man-made laws and policies; and (3) a white, educated, privileged woman (me) who peacefully bucks the system might make more of a ripple.

Bill McKibben, Naomi Klein, Wendell Berry, James Hansen, Maude Barlow and others are calling for direct action in Washington, DC, in August, which may lead to arrest. click here for more info . I plan to attend.

Several Sierra Club members attended DeChristopher’s speech, including staffer Shrayas Jatkar, who said, “Many of Tim’s insights made me uncomfortable and challenged me to think about how to be more effective in my work. For instance, I’m more compelled to find ways to address adaptation in our clean-energy campaigns after hearing about Tim’s encounter with a climate scientist who admitted to her generation’s failure to reign in emissions.

“Despite any differences in tactics, I left the event feeling that the Sierra Club’s choice in its most recent strategic brief is in line with the sentiment of the public and leaders of a climate-justice movement: that we must ‘diminish the power of the coal and oil industries.’”

“Tim’s actions are certainly compelling and inspiring to read about,” said Roger Singer, Sierra Club regional senior organizing manager. “They clearly fall outside of Sierra Club’s mission program that states that we employ ‘all legal means’ in our conservation advocacy work. That said, we all work toward similar goals, if by different means. Sierra Club and other partnering conservation groups had filed legal actions against these O&G leases and won an injunction in January 2009. In February, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar withdrew them from consideration,” Singer said.

While Tim’s tactics brought more public attention to the issue, the lasting protections for these natural landscapes clearly required action from within the system as well as outside.