Judge Averse to Global Warming Trial in Utah Case

Source: NY Times

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) -- A federal judge said Friday he's reluctant to put global warming on trial in the case of a Utah college student charged with disrupting a federal oil and gas lease auction for parcels near several national parks.

U.S. District Judge Dee Benson gave attorneys for Tim DeChristopher a month to file briefs saying why they should be allowed claim he was acting in the interest of the greater good.

DeChristopher says he posed as a bidder last December -- and indeed won $1.7 million in leases -- in an act of civil disobedience to protect wild lands near Utah's national parks from drilling and call attention to climate change.

After a 45-minute hearing, Benson didn't rule out the possibility of DeChristopher's so-called ''lesser-of-two-evils'' defense but said he's reluctant to ''open this courtroom to a lengthy hearing on global warming.''

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2009/09/25/us/AP-US-National-Parks-Drilling.html?_r=1