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Hayley Cavataro AMH3930H Final Exam

**Timothy DeChristopher: Climate Justice Criminal** Interfering with the auction is no different from burning down a man’s cattle operation. He took millions of dollars away from us, and he’s laughing at us. It’s not right. It’s not fair. - Mike Noel, Utah State Representative of District 73

“I can’t understand why there aren’t rings of young people blocking bulldozers.” - Al Gore

The auction itself was illegal. When Barack Obama would take the office of the American presidency, his administration would review the sales and determine them void. But as of December 19th, 2008, this event was supposed to the last of the oil and gas land lease auctions of the Bush Administration. In his lame duck period, the administration attempted to (as they had done in the past), auction off the drilling rights to many public lands, this time in red rock county of Utah. About a hundred activists attended the rally outside of the event. Timothy DeChristopher’s main intention when he arrived was to somehow disrupt the auction itself. A veteran of previous protests, he had become disenfranchised from years of remaining within his legal right to protest. To put it bluntly, the wildlife DeChristopher was fed up with symbolic action: he wanted to end the injustices he saw. That day, he decided to enter the building. By happenstance, somebody staffing the event mistook him for a bidder and he took the paddle emblazoned with the number ’70. DeChristopher explains that he “made a commitment to do whatever I could do to disrupt the auction, but I didn’t know what that would mean.” The college student threw a proverbial monkey wrench into the mechanics of the auction: he accepted the offer of a bidding paddle, and assuming the role of a legitimate prospector, he began to bid on parcels. He drove up the price of several parcels, and successfully bidding on 14 parcels of land (22,500 acres) for 1.8 million. During a radio interview, DeChristopher listed the egregious actions of the auctioneers and administrations that drove him to take illegal action: “a lack of a transparent and inclusive process, the public had been left out of the decision making process for public land and the destruction of our natural heritage, destroying those beautiful places” (Citizen Radio). Selma Sierra, the head of Utah’s Bureau of Land Management dismissed the activists’ concerns, promising that due to the cost of drilling only six percent of the land would ever see a drilling rig. She also assured an interviewer that the federal government also typically imposes environmental safeguards on drilling parcels auctioned off. This sentiment was countered by many environmental activists, from the famous Robert Redford protestors like DeChristopher: "If we're going to sacrifice public lands, let's do it with some deliberation, not in a hasty way," Joseph Flower, a University of Utah biology student, told the Huffington Post (ZelleR). The DeChristopher trial is a case study of recent political and environmental climate. A reaction to the mingling of state economy and the oil and gas industry, a state imprisoned a climate justice activist for two years for a nonviolent crime. There are several players in this story: The federal government and major players in the oil and gas leasing industry serve as the kings, DeChristopher (as the man outside of power but within the land) is the farmer, and the red rock country of Utah is this situation’s natural environment.

**The Natural Environment** Climate scientists speculate that since the industrial revolution, human greenhouse gas emissions have caused a spike in the temperature’s planet by one degree Celsius. Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Scientists Bill McKinnon said that, “Climatologists tell us unless we get off gas, coal, and oil, that number will be four to five degrees before the end of this century. If one degree is enough to melt the Arctic, we'd be best not to hit four degrees." Climate science is a relatively new field, one with varying opinions and points of uncertainty. The sheer scale and intensity of climate change recently is enough to make most worry about the unknowable effects of the twentieth century’s revolution in energy usage. DeChristopher warns of a coming climate collapse, but some have more optimistic details to add to the discussion of climate change. “Current predictions, which will be revised,” McNiell writes in ‘Something New Under the Sun. “Imply several decades before oil and gas should run out, and several centuries before coal might. We can continue to live off the accumulated geological capital of the eons for some time to come – if we manage or accept the pollution caused by fossil fuels” (p. 16). Pollution is one of the many other hazards that come with climate change beyond hyperbolic ideas of a doomed world. Climate change and the industry that propagates it destroy land, and cause terrible misfortune to those living in areas most affected by the damaging consequences. This process can have deleterious effects on populations previously free from pollution. Water supply has become increasingly polluted in poorer areas. This leads to an increase in water-bourn diseases and increases in mortality. This is compounded by synthetic disasters such as oil spills. 2.2 million citizens of developing lands die every year due to food and water bourn disease incited by greenhouse gases and air pollution. Up to 50,000 people are speculated to have died during the 2003 European heat wave, caused by extreme temperature change. The people affected by this tend to be socioeconomically disadvantaged, with little access to clean food, water, or education, much less a means to make enough money in order to move away. The climate justice movement encompasses more than environmental disaster. It also addresses economic justice, and the growing wage inequality that the energy industry propagates and profits from. DeChristopher’s case is an example of the mingling between the players of society and environmental relationsL one cannot talk about this case without examining the economy, the legal system, the state, and climate science.

**The King: Bush-era Deregulation** Auctions like the one on December 19th, 2008 were legal because of a Reagan-era implementation designed to deregulate the free market. The United States’ Federal Onshore Oil and Gas Leasing Reform Act of 1987 amended the Mineral Leasing Act of 1920. It made it legal for the American government to rent out the drilling rights of public lands to oil and gas corporations. The new legislation deregulated the United States’ Department of Agriculture and Forest Service, allowing the agency to make decisions regarding the leasing of public lands containing minerals of the Nation Forest Systems, without consulting the public. The government, of course, profited off of it. But this was at the expense of the public (the proverbial “farmer”) and the natural environment that was mined for nonrenewable resources such as fossil fuels. To fully understand how the state enacted its power in this situation, one must first examine theories about how the ruling class works. David Graeber, in his work ‘Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology’ defines the state as “a group of people who claim that, at least when they are around and in their official capacity, they are the only ones with a right to act violently.” Violence, it is argued by opinions present in the climate justice movement and those attempting to suppress it, has a broad definition. According to those present at the oil and land lease auction and the administration that supported it, DeChristopher committed a crime by attempting to interfere with the illegal auction of public lands. DeChristopher himself agrees that what he did was against the law. But he argues that precedent of the state shows that, in the face of dire consequences, he had a right to act in such a way in order to stop something wrong. The matters of the state get even more complicated when it evolves on a natural trajectory, enacting over the chosen economy of the state. “The highest class is the one that is furthered by the actions of the state,” (Therborn 149) so it only makes sense that big industry such as oil would have grown to such a size because of support from the administration. If the state is involved in a class alliance, the state must promote the market in order to maintain control and regulate the market. Therbon has much to add to the discussion of class and state power: “Once it is entrenched in the state apparatus, the ruling class of hegemonic class of an alliance enjoys a privileged position of strength, from which it may process to withdraw concessions.” While always influenced and shaped by the class relations in society, the state itself tends to manifest these cultural norms with a particular rigidity. This compounded with the American government’s history of deregulation and the comingling of money and politics. For five years, Dick Cheney served as the head of Halliburton, one of the world’s most profitable players in the late 20th-century’s oil and gas complex. During his first four years serving as Vice President of the United States, he received $398,548 in deferred contracts from the company and held about eight million dollars in Halliburton’s stock, after retiring from Halliburton in 2000 in order to run for president (his severance package was $36 million). In turn, Halliburton’s worth multiplied, as it became the preferred contractor with the government during the Iraq War. In 2003, Halliburton received a $4.2 billion contract from the Bush Administration. It’s evident that the government and government officials passed back and forth (ridiculously large) sums of money to companies that rely on fossil fuels and other environmentally damaging resources. The federal government assumed land rights over this public land, theoretically in order to protect and preserve the precious minerals found there. They held power and control over that land, but they held that privilege in the name of the people. Instead, DeChristopher argued, of consulting the public, the federal government abused its power by auctioning off leasing and drilling rights to that land. The rights of the federal government over the land are obvious, but are they legal? And is their decision to lease the rights to oil drilling on the land the best for the nation, the people, and the environment? Or was it done to make a quick profit for the ruling class? DeChristopher assumes the rhetoric of a farmer several times during his trial. “What we’re seeing in places like [Coal River, West Virginia] is that the alternate energy model First we’ve got to overthrow the corporate power that is running our government in order for us to have the freedom to initiate local project that we want to see. But I think it will involve confrontation and sacrifice. **The Trial** Timothy DeChristopher’s trial raises several interesting legal questions. DeChristopher’s actions can decidedly be classified as nonviolent civil disobedience: inspired by suffragettes like Alice Paul (who was jailed for blocking streets while picketing the White House), DeChristopher’s actions may be illegal, but they follow a long line of citizens who created change with their drastic actions when faced with moral issues and oppression. DeChristopher and his team of lawyers initially wanted to claim what is referred to as the ‘Necessity Defense.’ To do so, they would have to prove that DeChristopher was faced between choosing two evils, and that he chose the lesser of his only two options. The United States District Judge and Federal prosecutors denied this request. The jury never knew that the auction was overturned anyway, because the government admitted that it was illegal in the first place. The jury was also never told that DeChristopher, having achieved massive environmental status because of the media’s coverage of his case, successfully raised the money he had promised during the auction, which was then refused by the federal Bureau of Land Management (Goodel) The trial merely determined if DeChristopher did in fact break the law by blocking the auction. DeChristopher has admitted several times that he is guilty of that – but the circumstances around the case. The auction was invalidated, and of course, explanations of DeChristopher’s moral beliefs were disallowed in court. The jury was only informed that he was an “environments.” Deciding this case without discussing the motive of the crime, and then sentencing the defendant to a disproportional amount of jail time (two years for a nonviolent crime) surely leaves most of the power in the hands of the state. Defense attorney representing Timothy DeChristopher, Ron Yengich, suspected “political machinations” behind DeChristopher’s sentencing. Indeed, the day before receiving his actual sentencing, DeChristopher and his lawyers learned about the defendant’s two-year punishment through an Associated Press reporter who heard the truth from an oil and gas lobbyist. DeChristopher provides many sound bites during interviews and other public statements to reference this incident (among other disheartening details of his trial) as evidence of more widespread corruption and collusion of the government and gas and oil industries (Goodel). This itself is a means of power and control. In the case of the December 19th, 2008 auction, the government has since admitted that the auction itself was unlawful and a poor decision for the greater good. Leasing public land to private corporations so that they may drill for oil and other minerals in the name of profits but at the expense of the land, air, and the beings that rely on these things for sustenance (that would be everybody) is shortsighted at best. The Obama administration, upon gaining power, voided the leases promised at the auction. It becomes more apparent that the auction DeChristopher protested was simply the last of a long line of egregious actions that ignored environmental realities and consequences in favor of focusing on a profit. A political prisoner can be defined as ‘someone who is in prison because they have opposed or criticized the government of their own country’ (Potter). While DeChristopher was not given a chance to explain the motives for his actions, as Judge Dee Benson ruled it irrelevant to the case, there seem to be many hazy details surrounding the level of DeChristopher’s radicalism that influenced the harsh punishment he received. In DeChristopher’s case, the prosecution offered the defendant a reduced sentence, providing that he plead guilty to the charges. The college student refused explaining that he refused to be made an example of how the government could coerce climate justice activists to compromising to the rules that they feel morally opposed to. The prosecutor on behalf of the federal government, when he did refer to the defendant’s motives, did so as a form of derision. Prosecutor John Huber claimed on record that climate justice was merely “the cause of the day” and accused DeChristopher of using the trial as a means to get publicity for his pet project. Judge Benson, the man who presided over the case (who had formerly worked with both George Herbert Walker Bush and Dick Cheney) said that DeChristopher, who released many statements to the press and attempted to generate publicity, would have gotten a less harsh punishment if had had remained more silent about his environmental beliefs. The judge cited the “continuing trail of statements” as the reason for his lengthy sentence as “the offense itself wasn’t that bad” (Potter). On March 9th, DeChristopher was transferred to a restrictive “special housing unit” after a U.S. congressman alerted (Goodel). The fact that DeChristopher was legally allowed to be forced into solitary confinement after sending an innocuous e-mail to a colleague (and at the behest of a congressman completely removed from the situation) should raise eyebrows about the American justice system. **Conclusion** If I may, I would like to quote Timothy DeChristopher’s predecessor in nonviolent civil disobedience, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, “we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a ‘thing-oriented’ society to a ‘person-oriented’ society. [This cannot happen] when machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people.” No disrespect to Dr. King, but he forgot to address something beyond a ‘person-oriented’ society: one that weighs the earth with as much importance as the people and things that inhabit it. The past few months in this class has been focused on the three-legged stool that comprises the study of the environment and human interaction: that of the farmer, his king, and the natural environment. It involves the DeChristopher trial and the surrounding actions of the government, those benefitting most from the oil industry, and the deleterious effects the actions DeChristopher was protesting had on the lands. Perhaps the extreme reaction of the judicial system is the most fascinating aspect of this case. DeChristopher’s actions were rash, but the disproportional punishment (two years in jail for a nonviolent crime, sequestered in solitary confinement) and the suppression of DeChristopher’s concerns seems to me as though one should be more suspicious about the realities of climate change and the interests of the government. Or at least, demand the representation of the people to be more protect of civil liberties and the land.

Works Cited "Citizen Radio." Interview. Audio blog post. //Citizen Radio//. Web. . Goodel, Jeff. "America's Most Creative Climate Criminal." //Rolling Stone//. Web. Goodel, Jeff. "Jailed Climate Hero Tim DeChristopher Thrown in the Hole." //Rolling Stone// 28 Mar. 2012. Web. Graeber, David. //Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology//. Chicago: Prickly Paradigm, 2004. Print. McNeill, John Robert. //Something New under the Sun: An Environmental History of the Twentieth-century World//. New York: W.W. Norton &, 2000. Print. Potter, Will. //Green Is the New Red: An Insider's Account of a Social Movement under Siege//. San Francisco: City Lights, 2011. Print. "Rollingstone.com." //Rollingstone.com//. Web. 30 Apr. 2012. . Therborn, Göran. //What Does the Ruling Class Do When It Rules?: State Apparatuses and State Power under Feudalism, Capitalism and Socialism//. London: NLB, 1978. Print. Zeller, Tom. "Tim DeChristopher: Is Civil Disobedience The Key To Climate Change Action?" Web log post. //The Huffington Post//. 26 July 2011. Web. .