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- [00:00]
Zach Goldbaum
Audible subscribers can listen to all episodes of Lawless Planet ad free right now. Join Audible today by downloading the Audible app.
- [00:17]
Auctioneer
Again. 2560 acres of it, folks. It's in Grand County. Is it worth a two dollar start for this one? Would you be divided to two? Biddy two? Biddy two. I have two now. Two and a quarter, two and a half and 275.
- [00:29]
Zach Goldbaum
It's December 19th, 2008, and the US Bureau of Land Management, aka the BLM, is holding an auction in Salt Lake City, Utah. They're selling off parcels for oil drilling and development. The room is filled with guys known as landmen. You might know the term from the Billy Bob Thornton TV show, conveniently called Landman. Essentially, they're middlemen who negotiate land rights for big oil and gas companies.
- [00:54]
Tim DeChristopher
They were kind of a mix of, you know, what you think of as like a standard businessman. To those that kind of like tried on the cowboy aesthetic, that's Tim DeChristopher.
- [01:03]
Zach Goldbaum
He's also in the room, just 27 at the time, with a shaved head and light stubble. As the auctioneer brings up new parcels, Tim starts raising his paddle. It's got his assigned bidder number on it, number 70. At first he's bidding higher prices, but always bails when they get too high. But then about halfway through, he changes his tactics. He decides he's not going to let anyone outbid him. So he keeps bidding going higher and higher until the auctioneer calls out his paddle number.
- [01:39]
Tim DeChristopher
When he said sold to bidder number 70, a lot of heads in the room turned and looked at me.
- [01:47]
Zach Goldbaum
Then Tim does it again and again. One parcel, then two, three, four, five. Now the landman in the room really stood. Start looking at him funny. The oil industry is a small world and most of them know each other, but they don't know Tim.
- [02:08]
Tim DeChristopher
So after I won 14 parcels in a row, then the auctioneer said, oh, we're going to take a five minute break. And as soon as he said that, there was somebody standing next to me with a badge who said, can we go talk outside?
- [02:23]
Zach Goldbaum
He ushers Tim out into the hallway and peppers him with questions. Tim's not one of their normal bidders, and the official wants to know how Tim intends to pay for the $1.8 million worth of leases he's just won. But here's the thing. He has no intention of paying for any of it, because Tim DeChristopher is not a landman. He is a climate activist. From audible orig welcome back to fictionals. I'm zach goldbaum. And this is lawless planet. Each week we tell a new story about the true crimes fueling the climate crisis and the people fighting to save the planet or destroy it.
- [03:11]
Tim DeChristopher
I said this is an act of civil disobedience, because what's going on here is a cr.
- [03:27]
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- [04:04]
Zach Goldbaum
Before we get to today's story, I should tell you that this is our last episode of Lawless Planet. I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but, hey, when you host a show about climate change, that's kind of part of the job. But I do want to thank everyone who tuned in to listen every week and to everyone who worked tirelessly to produce it. If we could get even a few people thinking and caring about how we treat the environment, then I think we can consider this a small victory. And that's kind of what we're talking about today, small victories and how they add up in the fight to save the planet. When you hear the term civil disobedience, most people think about mass public demonstrations and protests. But sometimes the most effective acts of civil disobedience involve a single individual willing to disrupt the system. Tim DeChristopher was that guy. He stood up to the oil industry and the Bureau of Land Management, disrupting that oil and gas leasing auction in 2008. He hoped to inspire the climate movement to take an even stronger stance moving forward. He never expected to be thrust into the spotlight, but he was. And he became a voice for a movement he maybe wasn't ready to lead. Nearly 20 years ago, Tim DeChristopher took a stand. Did it make a difference? I talked to Tim about this and more for our final episode of lawless planet. Tim DeChristopher's connection to nature goes back to his childhood in West Virginia.
- [05:34]
Tim DeChristopher
It was beautiful. You know, it was rolling mountains, beautiful forest, vast streams. And I spent a lot of time playing in the woods.
- [05:42]
Zach Goldbaum
As a kid, Tim was raised by parents who believed in protecting the land at all costs. Tim's mom, Christine, was an accountant. And even though his dad was a natural gas engineer, both were environmentalists.
- [05:54]
Tim DeChristopher
My parents were very engaged in the struggle against mountaintop removal coal mining. My mom was one of the founders of the West Virginia chapter of the Sierra club.
- [06:04]
Zach Goldbaum
Through the Sierra Club, Tim's mom helped lead the fight against mountaintop removal mining back in the 80s in Appalachia. It's a process where the tops of mountains are literally blasted off with explosives. Even though Tim's parents kept him relatively sheltered from the more extreme acts of protest, he was well aware of the effects of the coal industry on him and his community.
- [06:26]
Tim DeChristopher
You know, when I was a little kid growing up in West Virginia, I remember I was in first grade, and all of our school supplies either had the coal company logo on it or the natural gas company logo on it. And, you know, kind of the idea, even at that age in school was like, you know, if you work hard and you're a good student, you, can go work for the natural gas company, Otherwise, you'll go work for the coal company.
- [06:56]
Zach Goldbaum
But Tim could see a different future for himself thanks to his parents. And so when he was in his early 20s, Tim got his first real job. And of course, it was out in nature. He began working at a youth wilderness program in the ozarks in southern Missouri. Then he got a job at a similar program in Utah.
- [07:15]
Tim DeChristopher
So my first few years out in Utah, I was working out in the desert, in the mountains, in a wilderness therapy program with youth. The youth I was working with were mostly sent there against their will because they were so called troubled teens.
- [07:29]
Zach Goldbaum
The troubled teen industry is a loose network of private programs that claim to help adolescents with behavioral, emotional, and substance abuse issues by removing them from their homes and placing them in highly controlled environments. We're talking boot camps, residential treatment centers, and so called wilderness schools.
- [07:52]
Tim DeChristopher
And, you know, I found working with them that they were all pretty justifiably angry at the world, but they were pretty reasonable kids struggling to adapt to live in a very unreasonable world. And so I started looking at and thinking about how I wanted to tackle more of those systemic issues Rather than helping people adapt to a fundamentally inhumane world.
- [08:17]
Zach Goldbaum
Tim reflected on the issues he was talking about, and he came to the realization that all the decisions that led to those problems seemed to be made, or at least justified with economics. And so he decided to go back to school and get his degree in econ. Tim Ended up going to the University of Utah, where he became more and more focused on the issue of climate change. One day in 2008, he went to a symposium where one of the keynote speakers was a scientist named Dr. Terry Root. Her organization had won a Nobel Prize with a study about how the planet changes when it warms and ways to mitigate those risks.
- [08:56]
Tim DeChristopher
She was talking about all of the emission scenarios that they came up with of sort of the worst case where we continue on our current trajectory and have increasing emissions and some middle cases, and the best case where we peak around 2030 globally and start coming back down.
- [09:15]
Zach Goldbaum
Tim had read the report Dr. Root Co authored, so he was confused why she was talking about 2030 when the report had indicated that emissions needed to peak no later than 2015 in order to avoid the worst of climate change. Tim waited until she was done speaking, and then he went up to her afterwards and asked about the report.
- [09:37]
Tim DeChristopher
And I said, so what am I missing here? It seems like you guys are saying there are no scenarios you could come up with in which we really avoid the worst case. And she said, you're not missing anything. There are things we could have done in the 80s and things we could have done in the 90s, but I'm sorry my generation has failed yours.
- [09:57]
Zach Goldbaum
Tim couldn't believe what he was hearing. This was 2008, only seven years away from that 2015 deadline. He knew the fight was pressing, but he didn't realize just how late to that fight they all were.
- [10:10]
Tim DeChristopher
To just drop that on me, it was pretty shattering. I actually went outside the conference and cried for a while, and it definitely sent me into a bit of a dark period of mourning and grieving.
- [10:27]
Zach Goldbaum
But another part of Tim found it liberating. He realized that all of the things he was worrying about seemed inconsequential now. Who cared about a successful career when the planet was at risk?
- [10:37]
Tim DeChristopher
I think going through that kind of existential crisis about how far along the climate crisis was already at that point, freed me from some of that and put me in a position where I was willing to take some bigger risks.
- [10:52]
Zach Goldbaum
According to Tim, there was a lot of rhetoric about urgency in the climate movement at the time, but not a lot of action to back it up.
- [11:00]
Tim DeChristopher
The climate movement itself was still very professionalized, very much run like a lobbyist operation.
- [11:10]
Zach Goldbaum
Tim had this awakening around the same time that he was studying the history of other social movements. He read up on people like Alice Paul of the women's suffrage movement, who, in the early 20th century, escalated tactics and Embraced being more confrontational. He felt like the climate movement needed to bring those same strategies to the table.
- [11:29]
Tim DeChristopher
You know, at that time, I was seeing the need for both that big vision that really inspires people to work for change and scares people at the top of the power structure that if they don't concede, they could really lose a lot. And also the kind of confrontational strategies that make their voice, their narratives, impossible to ignore.
- [11:56]
Zach Goldbaum
At the end of 2008, the Bush administration was in its final months before Obama took office. During that time, they shifted into overdrive to strip away regulations and impose new rules to cement Bush's legacy throughout the federal government. The administration actively tried rolling back environmental protections, including weakening the Clean Water act and easing pollution controls for coal fired power plants. The administration also gave the Bureau of Land Management approval to lease 2 million acres of land in the west for oil and gas development. Conservation groups call it a last minute Christmas present from the Bush administration to the oil and gas industry. A plan to auction the drilling rights to some of the most wild and scenic areas left in America. The park service protested too. The parcels of land that were up for sale included, that were so close to Arches national park that drills would have been visible from some of the most iconic places in the park.
- [12:55]
Tim DeChristopher
These lands are not Cheneys and Bush's. The lands are ours.
- [13:01]
Zach Goldbaum
That's the late filmmaker and activist Robert Redford, who was also protesting the midnight sale of these lands.
- [13:08]
Tim DeChristopher
These are public lands and the BLM is supposed to be protecting those lands on our behalf. Now, once these lands are taken away, they're gone, and gone doesn't come back.
- [13:20]
Zach Goldbaum
As a result of the pushback, some of the parcels were taken off the auction list. But 110,000 acres of red rock public land in Utah remain, and an auction was set to take place to sell off the development rights in December 2008. Tim was pissed that the BLM was going through with it.
- [13:41]
Tim DeChristopher
You know, I was carrying a lot of anger at that time. I was a young person and a lot of it felt really personal to me. There was definitely the narrative that, you know, this is just business decisions. There's nothing personal about this. But to me as a young person, it felt like this is a price that is being put on the future of my generation and on all the generations coming after me. And it's a cheap price every time. The industry or their supporters would argue that to move away from fossil fuels would be too expensive, to reduce emissions would be too expensive. The kind of personal undertones that felt like to me was like, you're not worth it. The lives of everyone you care about are not worth it. The lives of your children and grandchildren that may one day come along are not worth it.
- [14:36]
Zach Goldbaum
Tim felt determined to do something, and he was ready to be more confrontational.
- [14:42]
Tim DeChristopher
I was showing up for all sorts of stuff. I was showing up for hearings and rallies and face to face meetings with government officials and generally walking away feeling like, well, that was pointless, that was bullshit and a waste of my time.
- [14:59]
Zach Goldbaum
But this auction seemed like an opportunity to maybe show up and do something different, something that would actually make a difference. On the morning of December 19, 2008, 27 year old Tim DeChristopher was taking a final in a class called Current Economic Problems. The students had actually talked about the upcoming land auction during the course of the semester. And now on the exam, there was
- [15:26]
Tim DeChristopher
a question in this auction that's happening later today. If it's only oil and gas companies bidding on these parcels, will the final price reflect the true cost of developing that oil and gas? And so it was a question all about the externalities that are not priced in.
- [15:45]
Zach Goldbaum
Tim finished his exam, but he couldn't stop thinking about that question. He knew that an environmental group called Southern Utah Wilderness alliance had planned a protest for later that day outside of the auction. And he'd heard that some of his friends were going. So Tim decided to join too. He showed up to the BLM office in downtown Salt Lake City, a nondescript office suite inside the Gateway Mall. By the time he got there, a few dozen people had gathered. They walked back and forth on the sidewalk, chanting and carrying signs.
- [16:19]
Tim DeChristopher
I ran into a few people that I knew and I said, you know, let's go inside and, you know, see what we can do in there. They said, oh, they won't let you in, you know, you'll just get dragged out by security at the door. And I said, all right, then let's go get dragged out by security at the door and, you know, at least make that statement with our actions. And they said, no, no, we can't do that. And so I went up to the door myself and a security guard there said, hi, are you here for the auction? And I said, yes, I am. And so he directed me to a table where another official said, are you here to be a bidder? And I said, well, yes, I am, just thinking like, okay, I'll sign up so that I can get inside.
- [17:03]
Zach Goldbaum
Tim was shocked that it was that easy. No one seemed to question whether he was allowed to be there. He filled out the paperwork using his real name and address. Then the organizers handed over a big card and sent him upstairs. He wasn't really sure what his plan was, but now he was officially entering the auction as bidder number 70. As Tim DeChristopher made his way into the Bureau of Land management auction in December 2008, he wasn't sure what he was going to do. He considered getting up and yelling something or throwing something, like the guy who had recently protested the Iraq war by throwing his shoes at President Bush.
- [17:49]
Tim DeChristopher
I walked in the auction room, found a seat, and it was, you know, I'd never been in any situation like that, didn't know what to expect. And it was kind of like a TV cattle auctioneer up there talking really fast, saying, like, okay, I got 250 over there. 250. I got 275. Do I have eight? Do I have three? You know, and people just kind of barely lifting up their auction numbers, their little placards.
- [18:17]
Zach Goldbaum
Tim watched for a few minutes before realizing that he could definitely stir up some Trouble. He was bitter. 70. There was nothing stopping him from raising his own placard.
- [18:28]
Tim DeChristopher
These parcels were starting for $2 an acre, and most of them were going for under $10 an acre. And that just made me outraged, you know, again, that felt like a price that they were putting on our future. It was so offensively cheap.
- [18:52]
Zach Goldbaum
So in the middle of the next sale, Tim raised his placard. He started driving up prices. He was nervous, but also exhilarated.
- [18:59]
Auctioneer
I have two now, two and a quarter, two and a half and 275 and a three, three dollars. You want a particular three three dollar bids. You want a bid. Bid at three, bid a bid at three, and you want three.
- [19:09]
Tim DeChristopher
I would wait for it to get down to one bidder where they're saying, going once, going twice, and then I'd jump in, and then we'd go back and forth. And that kind of felt like I was like playing poker with somebody trying to read when they were getting close to their maximum price, and I'd get out before I won anything.
- [19:29]
Zach Goldbaum
Tim was filled with adrenaline. His strategy was working. He managed to drive up the prices so much that parcels that were going for $10 an acre were now going for $240 an acre.
- [19:41]
Tim DeChristopher
You know, I'd sit there afterwards and think, wow, that just cost that oil company like $400,000. That was the most effective thing I've ever done in my life. But still thinking like, okay, it's still a good deal for them. At that price, you know, even though they were hoping to get it for a fraction of what they knew it was worth, and they're still going to develop that oil.
- [20:05]
Zach Goldbaum
So then Tim debated whether he should push it further. Should he stop bailing out at the last minute and actually start winning parcels? He had no intention of paying for them. He didn't have the money even if he wanted to. But he could at least temporarily steal them away from the landmen who wanted to buy them up for cheap.
- [20:24]
Tim DeChristopher
I thought, if I do this, I'll probably go to prison for two or three years and have to declare bankruptcy. And I thought, could I live with that? And I thought, oh, yeah, that would suck, but I could live with that. And then I thought, if I don't do this, could I live with that?
- [20:42]
Zach Goldbaum
The answer for Tim was a resounding no. In that moment, he thought of a quote from the activist Edward Abbey.
- [20:50]
Tim DeChristopher
Edward Abbey said that sentiment without action is the ruin of the soul. And I think I was feeling a lot of that turmoil where, you know, in the climate movement, we were all saying, like, this is the greatest crisis humanity has ever faced, so change your light bulbs and sign a petition. You know, like, it didn't make sense. It was this incredible misalignment.
- [21:14]
Zach Goldbaum
Tim knew he had a rare chance to actually do something, and he was going to take it. He suddenly felt calmer than he had in a really long time because finally he had a purpose. And so he raised his paddle and he kept it raised, driving the price of the next parcel up and up and up.
- [21:33]
Auctioneer
22 and a half and 25 and 27 and a half and a 30 and a 32 and a half and 35 and 40 and 45 and 50 and 55. 55. You wanted to bid a bit to 55 and anybody want a bid to be to 55? 55, you want a bid of it to 55 and anybody want a bidden bid to 55? Are you all in? You all them at $50. Sold. $50 to bid at number 70.
- [21:56]
Zach Goldbaum
As the auctioneer sold the first parcel to Tim, everyone turned to look at
- [22:01]
Tim DeChristopher
him, and some of the people around me started making some comments and saying things like, why don't you save some for the rest of us?
- [22:09]
Zach Goldbaum
But Tim didn't save any for the rest of them. He managed to get a second parcel, then a third, a fourth, a fifth, all the way up to 14. His bids for all that land totaled $1.8 million.
- [22:24]
Auctioneer
Sold. $50 to be the number 70.
- [22:29]
Zach Goldbaum
This is when the BLM agent escorted Tim into the hallway and showed him a list of all the parcels he'd won.
- [22:36]
Tim DeChristopher
And he said, you know, we noticed that you're not one of our normal bidders, and so far you've won about $1.8 million worth of leases. And the down payment of that today is 80,000 some dollars. And we were just wondering what your intentions are and how you plan on paying for this. And I said, well, my intention is to stand in the way of this auction in any way that I can because it's a fraud against the American people and a threat to my future. And he said, so you don't plan on paying for this? And I said, no, nor do I have the means.
- [23:24]
Zach Goldbaum
Soon, Tim was taken into custody and put in a back room where he was questioned for three and a half hours by a mix of BLM agents, officers from the Department of the Interior, and some Salt Lake City policemen.
- [23:36]
Tim DeChristopher
And then, because it was part of the Gateway Mall complex, there was also a Gateway Mall cop in there who informed me about half a dozen times that I was now banned for life from the Gateway Mall.
- [23:49]
Zach Goldbaum
But by that point, Tim had way bigger problems. He had just disrupted a federal auction and pissed off a lot of very powerful people. There was a solid chance he would end up behind bars. After disrupting the BLM auction, Tim DeChristopher was held in a back room for several hours and questioned by law enforcement about his intentions, which he had made crystal clear. There was no dispute that he had willfully tried to interfere with the auction. So now the authorities had to decide what to do with him.
- [24:26]
Tim DeChristopher
They were trying to decide whether or not I would be charged that day or charged the next day. But it was a Friday afternoon by that point, and one of the questions that they had was whether or not they could just put those parcels back up for auction.
- [24:38]
Zach Goldbaum
Tim himself pointed out that they definitely couldn't do that. There were a lot of bidders who had walked out in disgust when he started winning all the parcels. And those people would be very upset if the parcels went back up for auction. And they missed out. The BLM would have to file a new 30 days notice to re auction the land.
- [24:58]
Tim DeChristopher
And so because of that, they decided they couldn't make a decision on me that day. And so they decided to let me go. And they said, you'll be indicted on Monday. So they took me down in the elevator and said that I just had to get off of the property.
- [25:14]
Zach Goldbaum
The first thing Tim did after they let him go was to talk to the gaggle of reporters waiting outside, the story was gaining momentum.
- [25:23]
Tim DeChristopher
You know, outlets like Democracy now picked it up right away, and so it kind of became national news pretty quick.
- [25:30]
Zach Goldbaum
Tim tried to make the most of that attention, taking every opportunity to speak out about what he'd done, why it was necessary. He thought he was about to get indicted at any moment, so he wanted his story to be out there in his own words by the time it happened.
- [25:45]
Tim DeChristopher
I knew the value of having an opportunity to speak up, and so I wanted to make the most of that. And it also had a heightened sense of emergency, both because of the urgency of the climate crisis and because there was the constant sense that, like, well, next week, they'll probably lock you up.
- [26:03]
Zach Goldbaum
But that promise that he would be indicted by Monday. Well, Monday came and went, and Tim heard nothing. He assumed it would come eventually. There was no way the federal government was going to let him off the hook that easily. Tim kept waiting for the other shoe to drop. But December passed, and then January, and still nothing. Then, at the start of February 2009, right after Obama took office, Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar made an announcement.
- [26:36]
Tim DeChristopher
In its last weeks in office, the Bush administration rushed ahead to sell oil and gas leases at the doorstep. Some of our nation's most treasured landscapes, particularly in Utah.
- [26:49]
Zach Goldbaum
Salazar announced that 77 of the leases that had been up for auction were going to be withdrawn. They were all subject to litigation. Activists from Earth justice had argued that the BLM sold the leases without proper analysis of the threats to air quality and archaeological resources in Utah. Tim felt vindicated. He had been saying this whole time that the auction itself was the crime, not what he had done. And for a brief moment, he thought maybe he wouldn't be prosecuted after all. And then, on April 1st, the other shoe dropped.
- [27:22]
Tim DeChristopher
Tim DeChristopher had been hoping the Obama administration would not press charges. But on Wednesday, U.S. attorney Brett Tolman indicted DeChristopher for two felonies. If convicted, Tim faces up to 10 years in prison and a 750,000 fine.
- [27:40]
Zach Goldbaum
Tim was charged with making a false statement to the federal government and for violating the federal Onshore Oil and Gas Leasing Reform act, an obscure law that Congress put in place in the late 1980s. One of the key provisions established the processes that must be followed by the BLM in order to conduct competitive bidding for oil and gas leases. It also established requirements for anyone who engaged in that process. And Tim, by raising his paddle that day, had engaged and therefore was bound by those laws. At least that's how the prosecution saw
- [28:14]
Tim DeChristopher
it in the Federal Onshore Oil and Gas Lease and Reform act had no case law because no one had ever been charged with that crime before.
- [28:24]
Zach Goldbaum
Tim had accepted that he might have to do some jail time, but that didn't mean he wanted to. And he had enough support coming his way that his legal team suggested that maybe he should just raise the money to pay off the down payment that he had technically owed to the blm. Tim was down to try. So he and his team put out a call for donations, and in no time at all, they raised enough money.
- [28:48]
Tim DeChristopher
So he offered that 80,000 whatever dollars to the BLM, and they refused to take it because they said that I'd already made my intentions clear by that point, that I wasn't going to develop it for oil.
- [29:01]
Zach Goldbaum
That was part of the deal with the Onshore Oil and Gas Leasing Reform Act. When parcels of land were auctioned off for a specific use, then you have to use it for that purpose. And on top of everything, around the time that he was indicted criminally, the federal government also filed a civil suit against him, suing him for about $80,000, the exact same amount of money he had just offered to pay them. It all felt like a bit of a farce, but it was only going to get more absurd. Initially, Prosecutors offered Tim DeChristopher various plea bargains. One involved him going to jail for 30 days, but then they would drop the larger charges.
- [29:57]
Tim DeChristopher
I talked it over with my lawyers, and my lawyer said, you know, they do want to make sure you spend some time in jail in order to send a message to other activists and in order to discourage other people. And it was that that made me think, you know, if that's their goal, that's exactly why I don't want to take it.
- [30:18]
Zach Goldbaum
The last thing Tim wanted to be was an example that might scare others into submission. He wanted to inspire, not serve as a cautionary tale. So he turned down the plea deal and committed to going to trial and fighting it all the way through. He figured he could sway a jury if he had a chance to take the stand. Unfortunately, there was a major obstacle standing in the way of that plan. And his name was Judge D. Benson.
- [30:45]
Tim DeChristopher
In person, the judge was just kind of distant. He never looked at me the whole time, whether we were in the courtroom or in meetings in his chambers, you know, and very procedural. Like most judges, he was focused on technicalities.
- [30:59]
Zach Goldbaum
Initially, Tim's lawyers wanted to prove that he was being selectively prosecuted for political reasons. They asked for more discovery, so they could prove that there were other instances where bidders sometimes made an offer they couldn't follow through on. Judge Benson shot those requests down, presumably because he didn't believe it had any bearing on Tim's particular case. But Tim's team wasn't deterred. If they couldn't get the case dismissed based on selective prosecution, then they were prepared to argue a necessity defense where they would lay out Tim's actions were all done to stop a greater harm or injustice. In this case, climate calamity.
- [31:38]
Tim DeChristopher
If there's like a fire in somebody's house and you break the door down, you know, if somebody wanted to charge you with breaking and entering, you know, you could say, well, I did that action, that would constitute breaking and entering. But there was a necessity to act to prevent the greater harm, to save the people who were inside.
- [31:58]
Zach Goldbaum
Tim and his legal team believe that same argument had some application in civil disobedience case law. But once again, Judge Benson didn't see things their way. He ruled that they couldn't talk about climate change at the trial at all.
- [32:12]
Tim DeChristopher
At every stage of the way, Kind of all these people that were paying attention to this case were like, what do you mean the judge can limit what you say? What do you mean? You're not allowed to say that in your own defense.
- [32:23]
Zach Goldbaum
They're also not allowed to bring up the fact that the auction was later reviewed and many of the leases canceled. They can't talk about the government breaking its own laws. The only thing they can talk about is whether Tim broke the Onshore Oil and Gas Leasing Reform act, which he did. No one was trying to deny that. Despite all the attention, Tim's legal case dragged on and on. He had nine different trial dates over the course of two years. Some of the delays were due to all the pre trial hearings. Others, Tim believed were politically motivated.
- [32:58]
Tim DeChristopher
You know, I had a trial date set for a couple weeks after the Deepwater Horizon well blew out. And within a couple of days after the BP well blew, the prosecution filed to delay the trial.
- [33:12]
Zach Goldbaum
Why?
- [33:13]
Tim DeChristopher
They gave no reason.
- [33:14]
Zach Goldbaum
Why do you think?
- [33:16]
Tim DeChristopher
Because it seemed like a really bad time to put somebody on trial for standing in the way of thoughtless oil drilling. And then my next trial date after that, a few weeks before that trial was set to begin, an oil pipeline burst in Salt Lake City in the middle of the night. So immediately after that, they postponed my trial again.
- [33:38]
Zach Goldbaum
And it went on and on like that. During that period, a documentary crew began following Tim, building up awareness of his case until finally, in February 2011, the trial kicked off with jury selection, and almost immediately, Judge Benson realized that something was off.
- [33:57]
Tim DeChristopher
The potential jurors had received a pamphlet on the street before they came into the courthouse, a pamphlet from the Fully informed Jurors association that talked about why we have juries as the conscience of the community and what their role is in protecting their fellow citizens from the government. When the prosecutor found this out, he lost his mind. And we had to have a meeting in the judge's chambers. And the prosecutor was yelling, spitting when he was reading for them. This thing saying, this notion of voting, your conscience is out in space. And he demanded that there be a
- [34:39]
Zach Goldbaum
mistrial, according to Tim. The prosecutor even threatened him for jury tampering. Even though the pamphlets didn't say anything about Tim or his case specifically, they were just talking about jury rights. The judge decided that the only way to deal with the situation was to speak with each juror one at a time in his chambers. Tim and his legal team were on one side, the prosecution on the other.
- [35:04]
Tim DeChristopher
The judge would say to each juror, now, you need to understand it's not your job to decide what's right or wrong. Your job is to listen to what I say, the law says, and you have to enforce it, even if you think it's morally wrong. Can you do that? Can you do what I ask you to do, even if you think it's morally wrong? And I sat in the seat closest to the jurors, and I watched one after another say, yes, your honor, I'll do whatever he asked me to do, even if I think it's morally wrong. And that's really the moment when I knew that I was going to be convicted.
- [35:40]
Zach Goldbaum
Tim was right. After less than four days at trial, the jury was sent off to deliberate. They came back four and a half hours later with their answer. Tim was guilty on both felony charges. After Tim was found guilty, he stepped outside the courthouse and addressed his supporters who had been waiting for him. The documentary crew who'd been following Tim captured the moment.
- [36:06]
Supporter/Activist
They tried to convince me that I was like a little finger out there on my own that could easily be broken. And all of you out here were the reminder for all of us that I wasn't just a finger all alone in there, but that I was connected to a hand with many fingers that could unite as one fist, and that that fist cannot be broken by the power that they have in there. That fist is not a symbol of violence. That fist is a symbol that we will not be misled into thinking we are alone. We will not be lied to and told we are weak. We will not be divided, and we will not back down. That fist is a symbol that we are connected and that we are powerful.
- [37:03]
Zach Goldbaum
But as much as he galvanized supporters, Tim's story was starting to be viewed as kind of a cautionary tale. As he awaited his sentencing, he sat in on a call for a mass action. No one had known he was on the call and he'd just been planning on listening in. But then someone asked what their legal strategy should be if they got arrested.
- [37:22]
Tim DeChristopher
One of the main organizers, who was somebody that I really respected and looked up to, he said, well, people will just pay their fine and take a plebe deal. We don't want anybody to be the next Tim DeChristopher. And it shocked me to hear that. And I actually spoke up on the call and I was like, what do you mean by that? And people were like, oh, who said that? I was like, this is Tim DeChristopher. What do you mean by that? That was the first time I realized that that's how other people were taking it, that it was this disaster and that it was like some kind of martyr.
- [37:57]
Zach Goldbaum
At the end of July, protesters once again gathered outside the courthouse in Salt Lake City to support Tim as he attended a sentencing hearing. This would be the first time Tim got a chance to actually lay out his case. So Tim got up during his sentencing and talked for 20 minutes straight. Then it was the judge's turn.
- [38:20]
Tim DeChristopher
The judge spoke for about a half an hour about how we can't really know the rule of God. So all we have is the rule of man, and we have to follow it no matter what the rule of law.
- [38:31]
Zach Goldbaum
The officer who had prepared Tim's sentencing guidelines had recommended no more than probation. But after Judge Benson was done with his big speech, he handed down his sentence, two years. Tim was shocked.
- [38:45]
Tim DeChristopher
So then immediately a couple guys stood me up and handcuffed me.
- [38:49]
Zach Goldbaum
He was taken to county jail.
- [38:53]
Tim DeChristopher
And it wasn't until that night that I saw on the jail TV what had happened, that after occupying the courtroom for a while, my supporters went onto the street and shut down the intersection.
- [39:05]
Zach Goldbaum
26 people were arrested. He was glad to see that activists were not cowed, but emboldened. Tim ended up spending 21 months in prison, almost all of his two year sentence, and he was released in April of 2013. He was 31 by then, but he'd lost none of his fire. He told the outlet in these Times that he wanted to make sure people didn't look at him like a symbol or some sort of icon. He didn't want them to think he was abnormal in order to justify their own inaction. He wanted people to realize that even if they acted as an individual, they were still part of a larger movement. It's been nearly two decades since Tim DeChristopher disrupted that auction. And while the climate justice movement has progressed in fits and starts, it's also hard not to look around and see a whole lot of failure. Everywhere you look there are rising temperatures, rising sea levels, and rising climate denialism and doomerism. Tim also thinks that in some ways civil disobedience has lost its power to grab people's attention.
- [40:12]
Tim DeChristopher
You know, civil disobedience is a tactic, but part of the power that underlies it is that when it works, it arouses people's empathy. We're not being as creative as we can be. We're not willing to take those risks. But that's a delicate balance to hold. To keep showing up and to keep acknowledging that we failed, it's demoralizing. It takes a deep amount of faith and a strong community to keep keep showing up, acknowledging that it hasn't worked over and over, but we're going to keep showing up.
- [40:45]
Zach Goldbaum
Today, Tim lives in Maine with his partner on a 200 acre piece of property that's owned and operated by the Land Peace foundation, which they run together. He farms and supervises construction and takes care of the land. Hands on work with tangible results, mostly done outside. And despite all of Tim's thoughts about how people should engage in civil disobedience, when we spoke, I was surprised to learn that he doesn't actually consider himself an activist anymore.
- [41:12]
Tim DeChristopher
I feel really conflicted about that because while I've developed a lot of cynicism about, you know, various forms of activism and various kinds of movements, I do still see a value in that. And I do personally still feel a call to do something, even though my cynicism tells me that all these things that I see an opportunity to do aren't going to make a difference.
- [41:34]
Zach Goldbaum
I mean, maybe that's one of the many lessons though here is like there are many ways to be effective in this sort of larger movement and some of that is doing actions and maybe some of that is also just sort of living it day to day. Because I do think if you're working the land and living by your values, do you feel like you can be more effective that way?
- [41:57]
Tim DeChristopher
No. I mean, I appreciate that sentiment, but I also know that the younger version of myself would be like, you're kind of a sellout, dude. Like, you're just living your comfortable little life in the world woods, you know, and you could be doing more. Like, I think that's what younger me would say. You could be doing more.
- [42:21]
Zach Goldbaum
The older you say, the younger you.
- [42:27]
Tim DeChristopher
I have no good response to that. Like, younger me is right. I think it was Edward Snowden who said that there are no such thing as heroes. There are only acts of courage and courageous choices made in the moment.
- [42:46]
Zach Goldbaum
It's a good reminder that choices like the one Tim made in the middle of that oil and gas auction, the one that cleaned out his bank account and put him in prison. Those choices weren't easy. But bold action only works if it's followed by more bold action. We're in a courage deficit, and the first step to clawing our way back may be as simple as standing up, raising your hand, or in the case of bitter 70 the paddle. Follow Lawless Planet on the Audible app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to all episodes of Lawless Planet ad free by joining Audible. For today's episode, we relied heavily on Rolling Stones, America's Most Creative Climate Criminal by Jeff Goodell Inside Climate News's Utah Climate Activists found Guilty of making False Bids on energy leases by B.B. van der Zee the Salt Lake Tribune's De Christopher goes on trial, but does he have a Defense? By Brandon Loomis and gravitas documentaries Bitter 70. Lawless Planet is produced by Audible. This episode was produced and hosted by me, Zach Goldbaum. It was written by Alex Burns. Our senior producer and senior story editor is Derek John. Senior producer for Audible is Andy Herman. Our senior Managing producer is Lata Pandya. Our managing producer is Jake Kleinberg. Our producer is Lexi Pirie. Music and sound design by Kenny Kusiak. Dialogue edit by George Drabing Hicks. Our music supervisor is Scott Velasquez for Frison Sync Fact checking by Brian Poonyant Our Legal counsel is Shepard Mullin, Executive Producer for Audible Jenny Lauer Beckman, Head of Creative Development at Audible Kate Navy, Head of Audible Originals North America Marshall Louie Chief Content Officer Rachel Chiazza Copyright 2026 by Audible Originals, LLC Sound Recording Copyright 2026 by Audible Originates LLC Sincerely thank you to everyone who listened. Until next time, Bye Bye.