ONLY ON THE BLOG / EXCLUSIVE: Answering today’s OFF-SET questions is environmental activist Tim DeChristopher. On March 4, 2011, a federal jury in Salt Lake City convicted him of two felonies—making false statements and violating the Federal Onshore Oil and Gas Leasing Reform Act–by fraudulently bidding on federal oil and gas leases during a December 2008 auction.

The Bush administration was offering to lease some 22,000 acres of public lands near Arches and Canyonlands national parks for oil and gas exploration. During his trial, DeChristopher told jurors that he left the protesters outside and entered the auction room with the goal of delaying the auction long enough so the government might take a second look at the situation. He began bidding and ended up winning more than $1.7 million in public land leases.

The Los Angeles Times reports that, weeks after the auction, a federal judge stopped the sales and later, the Obama administration voided most of the leases. But prosecutors made the case DeChristopher, who did not have the money to pay for his winning bids, had clearly committed a federal offense. In a statement, U.S Attorney Carlie Christensen said the government recognized people are passionate about public lands, but advocacy should not include “disrupting open public processes and causing financial harm to the government and other individuals.”

You are 29 years old and now you are facing up to ten years in prison. During the trial, you agreed with your attorney when he suggested that bidding on the leases was a spur-of-the-moment idea. Looking back, do you feel your actions that day are worth the consequences?

I certainly feel like my actions are worth the consequences.  My mindset at that time was that going to prison was worth it if my actions could keep that oil in the ground.  That direct goal has been achieved, since the auction has been overturned on the grounds that it shouldn't have happened in the first place.  

But there has also been the far more powerful indirect impact of all the people who were awakened and empowered by this story.  Their response makes whatever consequences I have to face more than worth it.

For those who didn’t follow the case, did you just walk up to a table in the auction room, ask if you could bid, were given paddle #70—and then you started bidding? And you bid millions?

I walked in with only a vague intention to do whatever I could to delay the auction until the government could take another look at whether or not this auction was legitimate.  To my surprise, when I walked in, an official asked if I was there to be a bidder.  I said yes in order to get into the auction, and then I saw my opportunity to actually stand in the way of this fraudulent process.  I ended up winning 14 parcels, totaling 22,500 acres for about $1.8.

Why were you and other environmentalists against leasing these public lands?

This auction was the epitome of the "drill now, think later" mentality that has dominated our energy policy and threatens our climate. These lands were right outside Arches and Canyonlands National Parks in a fragile and beautiful area.  But it was primarily the process, not the lands, that made this auction fraudulent and objectionable.  The government had not done their due diligence of weighing the consequences of drilling, and the public had been locked out of the decision making process for public property.

After you won, and didn’t have $1.79 million, were you arrested?

No.  I was taken into custody and questioned on the day of the auction, and I clearly explained to the officers what I was doing.  It was almost four months later by the time I was arrested and charged with a crime.  By that time, the BLM (Bureau of Land Management) had already refused to accept the money I raised to pay for the leases, and the government had overturned the auction because they weren't following their own rules in the first place.

You graduated from the University of Utah with a degree in economics. What were doing between graduation and the auction—were you working?

I was a student at the time of the auction.  I graduated a year later.  During the more than two years of waiting for trial, the government delayed the trial 8 times.  Since I was always a few months away from trial during that time, the only thing I could do was be a full-time activist.

This may sound insensitive, but how do you prepare for the possibility of 10 years in prison?

Some of that preparation has been speaking to others who have been through similar circumstances, including David Harris who spent two years in prison for draft resistance in the 1970s. I've gotten great advice from them on how to keep myself centered and do the time.

 I figure that prison is probably the kind of thing that you can't really be prepared for until you've experienced it, but I think I'm as prepared as I can be without having experienced it. But ultimately, I know that obedience to the status quo means a future much darker than 10 years in prison for one guy.