350 dot org
– Artist’s Website –
The climate change activists marched into the Superdome — that sports arena turned nightmare after Hurricane Katrina — and demanded an end to the auction.
“Stop the leases! Stop the greed!”
“Give the people what they need!”
A bunch of reps from the oil and gas industry looked at the protesters quizzically.
“I don’t know what to make of it,” one man told me.
The business types, seated in rows of folding chairs, many of them wearing starched shirts and blazers, had gathered Wednesday in a conference room inside the iconic stadium to bid for rights to drill for oil and gas on 45 million acres — 70,000 square miles — of federal property in the Gulf of Mexico.
So … was that climate change?
The activists — maybe 200 in all — did everything they could think of to stop it from being sold.
They stood in front of a podium on stage, holding signs that said “Keep it in the ground” and “Solar doesn’t spill,” a clear reference to the BP oil disaster that wrecked the economy and environment here six years ago this spring.
They chanted. They pumped their fists. They yelled.
“No! No!” one woman in a trucker hat yelled, running around the conference room and waving her arms. “Do not bid! You’ll all burn in hell!”
As I watched this wild — often totally excessive — scene unfold I was at times mystified.
But I also was thankful that these activists are making such auctions visible.