SALT LAKE CITY  Tim DeChristopher became convinced last year that global warming’s potential effects were so urgent and dire that direct action was needed. The niceties of debate and environmental lobbying were not getting the job done, he said.

So in December Mr. DeChristopher went to a federal auction of oil and gas leases  offered in the Bush administration’s closing days and even then the subject of protests and lawsuits  and bid on contracts that he had neither the money nor intent to actually fulfill.

“My intention was to cause as much of a disruption to the auction as I could,” said Mr. DeChristopher, a soft-spoken 27-year-old economics student at the University of Utah. “Making that decision  that keeping the oil in the ground was worth going to prison  that was the decision I made.”

Now, as his federal criminal case nears trial  he is charged with two felony counts of interfering with an auction and making false statements on bidding forms  a broader debate with legal, political and environmental threads is unfolding from here to Washington about what he did and what it means.