Tim DeChristopher is famous for his disruption in an oil and gas land lease auction where he outbid the rest in order to protect fragile land in southern Utah.Soon after he was sentenced to two years in federal prison for what was considered a civil disobedient act. Tim has been out of prison for less than one year now and currently attends the Harvard Divinity School. Tim sincerely believes that America is by far the most oppressed country in terms of mass consumerism. He denotes that we have all been bought out by toys and gizmos and therefore feel like we have more to lose if our current level of comfort were to change. This is why he says, “the climate movement is weaker in America than the rest of the world, simply because we have more stuff”.
The film Bidder 70 is a moving documentary detailing Tim’s 2008 auction disruption and his subsequent incarceration. The film makes a convincing argument about how proponents of the environment really do care about humanity, but we are all entangled in a legal system that is going nowhere to improve pressing environmental issues. The film screening of Bidder 70 will be tomorrow night at 7pm in the Linus Pauling Science Center room 125. Tim will be in person Saturday to meet and discuss at the Transformation Without Apocalypse Symposium in La Sells Stewart Center.
CATEGORIES: Energy Events and Outreach