Fifteen years ago, on this day, December 18, 2008, American climate activist Tim DeChristopher took a bold action that landed him in prison.
In December 2008, he protested a Bureau of Land Management (BLM) oil and gas lease auction of 116 parcels of public land in Utah‘s redrock country by successfully bidding on 14 parcels of land (totaling 22,500 acres) for $1.8 million with no intent to pay for them.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_DeChristopher#Appeal
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 386ppm. As of 2023 it is 420ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was
that the state is endlessly auctioning off land for extraction; that’s the ideology of extractivism. In 2008 the climate crisis was already absolutely freaking clear – you’d had the fourth assessment report of the IPCC, you were getting all the weird weather and worse. Everybody knew.
What I think we can learn from this
When you spoof the money for you interfere with the money myths, people get particularly irate because well it’s a fetish and nobody likes to be reminded that it’s a fetish.
What happened next
Tim Christopher did some jail time, and here we are.
See also Jonathan Moylan and the ANZ bank spoof.
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs..