COMMENTARY: Will judgment against Greenpeace put a dent in enviro-protests?
The past few years have seen the American environmental movement adopt protest tactics that have turned violent, been destructive and caused damage to the land they were trying to protect.
In March, a North Dakota jury found that Greenpeace, the environmental organization known the world over for its outrageous tactics in defense of Mother Earth, was responsible for inciting violent behavior and defaming an energy company engaged in the construction of a pipeline. That finding was accompanied by a judgment ordering the group to pay $660 million in damages.
It’s not clear the result will cause Greenpeace and other organizations to press the pause button on their public disturbance campaign, but it ought to. They spent years and billions cultivating an image that belies the violent acts and destruction of private property that has lately been in vogue.
Direct action is a return to Greenpeace’s more radical roots. Founded in 1971, it established its reputation by engaging in high-risk stunts, taking fishing boats into nuclear test zones and sending out small inflatables loaded with wide-eyed volunteers to harass much larger ships being used to hunt whales.
These tactics grabbed the headlines, raising the group’s profile at a time when concerns about the future of the environment were growing in the industrialized world. They also proved a boon to its fundraising efforts.
That started to change when the entire environmental movement shifted its focus to combating the possibility that man was causing the average temperature on Planet Earth to rise dangerously. That produced a shift in tactics, with Greenpeace taming its approach
That lasted only awhile, alas. The more people came to accept the fallacies associated with climate change theory, the more the stakes rose. You can’t remain quiet if the polar ice caps are melting, something we’ve been told year after year since the late 1980s. To demonstrate its power, the green movement became something akin to an iron fist in a velvet glove, smooth on the outside but ready to smash its opponents when necessary.
We’ve seen this renewed trend manifest itself time and again as protesters have vandalized works of art, shut down busy thoroughfares at the height of rush hour, protested ceremonial events and blocked access to government buildings.
In 2016, Greenpeace deployed paid protest organizers to North Dakota to stop construction of Energy Transfer’s Dakota Access pipeline. Protesters engaged in months long violent confrontations with law enforcement, sabotaged construction vehicles and used social media to spread malicious lies about the project and the company.
The pipeline was completed, only at a much higher cost because of project delays caused by the protest. Energy Transfer’s stock price took a hit, too, and the relentless lies spread about the company on social media probably had something to do with that.
The North Dakota jury verdict indicates Americans have grown tired of extremists who believe the fact “they care” gives them the right to destroy private property and disrupt people’s lives. North Dakota GOP Sen. Kevin Cramer said of the ruling, “Justice has been done with Greenpeace and its radical environmentalist buddies who encouraged this destructive behavior during the Dakota Access Pipeline protests.”
Even some of the people who participated in the Greenpeace-backed protest have second thoughts. One former environmental influencer noted that her views began to change after she learned 48 million pounds of garbage had been left behind, costing North Dakota taxpayers more than $1 million in cleanup costs. She also has concluded the now 7-year-old Dakota Access pipeline has “done a lot of good — including for the environment” by limiting train and truck traffic creating fewer opportunities for spills, accidents and emissions.
Greenpeace defenders, predictably, castigated the jury verdict as an assault on its free speech rights and an attempt to silence them. And they were rather noisy while doing it.
Since the verdict, the group has continued its attacks on Energy Transfer via news releases, blog entries and social media posts. It has participated in a multimedia project and podcast sharing inside stories about the Dakota Access protests. It continues to spin a narrative of its own, claiming free speech is on the line no matter what the jury decided.
Greenpeace has every right to do so. There’s no applicable law requiring it to tell the truth. Thanks to the jury verdict, however, the costs of spreading falsehoods and property destruction have risen to a level most activists will find unacceptable.
Peter Roff is former U.S. News and World Report contributing editor and UPI senior political writer now affiliated with several D.C.-based public policy organizations. Contact him at RoffColumns@gmail.com and follow him on X @TheRoffDraft.