President Obama's visit Tuesday to flood-ravaged Louisiana is being met by protesters who stormed Interior Department offices Tuesday morning with demands that he take the effects of climate change seriously.

"My heart is filled with both a deep sadness and deep anger — at the fossil fuel companies driving this ongoing crisis, and at an administration that continues to sell them the right to do so," said Cherri Foytlin in a petition she started last week to get the president to end offshore oil and gas leasing in the Gulf of Mexico.

Foytlin is a resident of the Gulf Coast and Louisiana director of the group Bold Louisiana, which is staging an occupation of the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management in New Orleans ahead of Obama's visit to survey flood damage. A major lease auction is set to be held at the New Orleans Superdome on Wednesday.

"The fact that this fossil fuel auction is set to take place in the New Orleans Superdome — the site of one of the most visible and tragic instances of climate injustice in recent history — is nothing short of insulting," she said. The activists blame greenhouse gas emissions from oil and gas production for warming the Earth's atmosphere, causing sea-level rise and more severe floods.

The Interior Department announced last month that Wednesday's auction would not be open to the public because of protesters' aggressive attempts earlier this year to block a lease auction by storming the proceedings.

Several citizen activist groups descended on Interior's energy headquarters on Tuesday, "risking arrest and occupying President Obama's Bureau of Ocean Energy Management's office ... demanding that he cancel the August 24th lease sale for offshore drilling in the Gulf of Mexico," they said.

The groups dumped debris from flood-damaged homes in front of the bureau's office doors. A banner reads: "President Obama: More Drilling = More Floods," which they said underscores the "agency's role in perpetuating the climate crisis."