"How are we going to use our own public lands, the lands we all own?"

That question, said Tim DeChristopher, 27, a senior economics student at the University of Utah, had vexed his soul for years.

Late last year, DeChristopher became a polarizing figure in Utah, hated and loved wherever he goes because on Dec. 19 he placed fake bids to win oil drilling rights on public lands to prevent oil companies from moving in. He is still waiting to find out if federal charges against him will be filed.

"I knew that ethically I had to act," he said.

Earlier this month, Utah Rep. Mike Noel, R-Kanab, told the Salt Lake Tribune that he considered DeChristopher's actions "environmental terrorism."

On Thursday DeChristopher came to speak in Utah Valley, first before a crowd of about 100 at Utah Valley University and then again that evening before members of the Utah Valley Sierra Forum. At one point DeChristopher said both crowds were surprisingly supportive. He knew this because both crowds were asked to vote on whether DeChristopher was justified in his actions, and in both places the vast majority agreed he was.

Feeling no need to win friends or defend against his detractors, DeChristopher allowed no middle ground in his speeches on Thursday, saying not only is civil disobedience ethical, but necessary to make seismic social shifts needed to protect the environment.

"We need to start pushing a lot harder and taking a less compromising stand in defending our future," he said. "The movement needs to take a stronger stand, to push the boundaries. ... I did have the power to change. People were locked out of the process of how are we going to use our own public lands, the lands we all own."

As a nation, "we are living beyond our means," he said, noting that he believes society must come to understand that all generations are created equal and the current generation must not take the resources that will be needed in the future.

At both meetings, DeChristopher urged the audience to engage in their own civil disobedience by protesting the construction of coal-fired power plants, for example.

"The failure of the [environmental] movement over the past few decades is that we have not had enough of this," he said, noting that too many people with environmental concerns have relied on distant environmental groups to take action.

"The rest of us have pretty much stayed home so that the big groups could fight our battles for us," he said. "Our job as citizens is to stand up and make demands of our representatives and political leaders. The best way to do that, in my opinion, is with direct action."

The U.S. tax code now taxes labor most heavily and subsidizes the exploitation of resources, which leads to "choosing oil from a tyrant over work for an American," DeChristopher said. "...We have been giving away guns to every violent regime for the past 50 years. We can give away solar panels and wind turbines."

For a long time before he decided to place the fake bids, DeChristopher said he had been in a sort of depression about the state of the world, triggered by hearing a Nobel laureate give a gloom-and-doom speech on climate change. After that speech, DeChristopher approached the speaker to ask about solutions, but the speaker had none.

"I'm sorry, my generation has failed yours," DeChristopher recalled the speaker telling him, putting a hand on his shoulder.

DeChristopher said he struggled with that pronouncement for a long time and then decided he had to act.

On Dec. 19 he went to the federal auction with the intention of protesting, but seeing the dejected attitude of those protesting with him, he decided to go further, to go inside "to shout something, or to throw a shoe," he said with a laugh.

Instead, someone at the door asked if he was there to bid. In a split-second decision, DeChristopher said he was.

For the first 30 minutes of the auction, DeChristopher said he did nothing, debating in his mind about how far he should go, and what the consequences would be.

"I was faced with this ethical dilemma," he said. "I knew there would be severe consequences. I had just signed this paper that said I understood it was a federal offense to bid without paying. I asked myself if I could live in prison for three years. Can I live with that? Then I asked myself if I could turn my back on this chance and do nothing -- then I am complicit with this destruction. Can I live with that?"

He started bidding, at first working only to raise the prices paid by oil companies. His goal, he said, was to make the companies pay what he considered to be more of a true price for what they were purchasing.

Eventually he cost those companies more than $750,000, he estimated.

Then he let himself win a bid, then he won the rights to about a dozen parcels in a row, and then he simply left his bidding hand in the air without taking it down at all. At that point federal agents stepped in and removed him from the auction.

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar earlier this month invalidated the auction of the 77 lease parcels, saying the Bush administration rushed to sell the leases near some of the "nation's most precious landscapes in Utah."

Salazar said he ordered the Bureau of Land Management, which is part of the Interior Department, to not cash checks from winning bidders for parcels at issue in a lawsuit filed by environmental groups.

DeChristopher has started a Web site to organize others interested in civil disobedience, www.peacefuluprising.org.

• The Associated Press contributed to this story.