A preview of the next four years played out Thursday morning at the Bureau of Land Management office in Lakewood. Dozens of fracking opponents gathered to protest an online public-lands auction to drillers.

Ceremonially they delivered a letter endorsed by 20 organizations asking the bureau to stop the online sales and complained about their right to free speech at leasing auctions.

“The Department of Interior seems to be consider the success of the oil and gas management program as more important than our global climate or the Constitutional rights of Americans,” the letter states. “This is shameful, unlawful, and it must stop.”

Wow, and that’s during a Democratic administration.

President-elect Donald Trump has signaled he’s more amenable to commerce on suitable public lands, nominating Oklahoma Attorney Scott Pruitt, a noted supporter of the industry, to lead the Environmental Protection Agency Wednesday.

“From Standing Rock, to the East, West and Gulf Coasts, to the Rocky Mountains, people are rising up to demand an end to collusion between the fossil fuel industry and our government and are coming together to protect ourselves and future generations,” Micah Parkin, executive director of 350 Colorado, said in a statement Thursday afternoon.

“If we are to avoid the most severe global climate impacts by keeping global temperature rise below 1.5 to 2 degrees Celsius, which ours and other nations of the world have agreed to, research shows that we can bring online no new fossil fuels. To preserve a livable climate, we must begin to keep fossil fuels in the ground-starting with public lands-and transition rapidly to a clean, renewable energy future.”

Andrea Guajardo, founder of Conejos Clean Water in southern Colorado, argued that other developed countries have banned fracking in favor of renewable investments, while the U.S. subsidizes it with cheap public land.

“It is a fallacy that energy independence in this continental nation must depend on fossil and nuclear based fuels that negatively impact human health in all stages of their fuel cycles,” Guajardo stated.

Energy-industry representatives, however, seemed to shrug off the event.

Dan Haley, president and CEO of the Colorado Oil and Gas Association, said he didn’t know enough about what the protesters were upset about to comment directly.

The Western Energy Alliance, another pro-energy group, tweeted from the protest and disputed protesters count of “dozens,” instead estimating about 10 people showed up and mocking a protester who parked a gas-powered vehicle.