Industrial Workers of the World

How the Yes Men inspired a climate activist to impersonate an oil speculator—and derail a multimillion-dollar federal land giveaway. —By Bryan Farrell

During the final days of the Bush administration, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) scheduled a controversial auction of oil and gas leases on federal lands, including areas bordering national parks and monuments in Utah. While environmental organizations launched a round of protests and lawsuits, Tim DeChristopher, a 27-year-old econ major at the University of Utah, decided he had to try to stop the sale by himself. Not knowing exactly how he'd do it, DeChristopher walked into the auction in Salt Lake City on December 19, 2008, and had a sneaky idea handed to him in the form of a bidder's paddle.

Simply by raising it again and again and pretending to bid on the leases, he proceeded to drive up their prices and outbid the real speculators on 13 parcels covering more than 22,000 acres and worth $1.7 million dollars.

As his trial nears, DeChristopher and his lawyers hope to convince the judge to allow a "necessity defense," an unusual tactic in which they would argue that his actions were justified because of the moral imperative of stopping catastrophic climate change—and because all legal means of stopping the auction had been blocked by the Bush administration due to its cozy relationship with the oil and gas industry.

DeChristopher, who has pleaded not guilty, tracks the progress of his case on his website, bidder70.org. Recently, he spoke about how the Yes Men helped inspire his brief stint as an oil speculator and why the climate movement needs to stop having fun and start considering civil disobedience.

http://www.bidder70.org/

Related: http://www.motherjones.com/category/primary-tags/us-chamber-commerce http://www.motherjones.com/media/2009/11/jumping-snark

http://howtomaketroubleandinfluencepeople.org/

In his recent Quarterly Essay, Quarry Vision, Guy Pearse quoted one American Carbon Capture and Storage advertisement which featured the slogan "We Believe" 17 times in 60 seconds, "as if enough faith and repetition will magically make 'clean coal' happen". http://newmatilda.com/2009/09/23/ferguson-speaks-fluent-denialese

http://newmatilda.com/2009/11/12/what-makes-climate-sceptics-tick