For over fifty years, environmental groups, like Greenpeace, have hounded companies that they wished to demonize. They would try to make it costly for companies to continue practices that they deemed were environmentally unsound. They had no problem slandering a company’s reputation, interfering with its operations, leading a boycott against it, or ensnaring it in frivolous lawsuits. It has been the strategy of environmental groups up until now, but that may be ending.

A North Dakota jury has awarded damages of hundreds of millions to the Dakota Access Pipeline operator, Energy Transfer, in a defamation suit against Greenpeace. The company alleged a “vast, malicious publicity campaign” against the company that damaged its relationship with the banks funding the pipeline. It also alleged that Greenpeace paid professional protesters, organized training events for demonstrators, and sent them lockboxes so they could attach themselves to construction equipment. The allegations highlight standard practices that Greenpeace has employed throughout its existence. Energy Transfer sought $300 million in damages stemming from lost financing, public relations costs, and the five-month delay in the pipeline’s construction and a jury agreed.

Now here is the good part. Greenpeace denied the company’s allegations, saying it played only a minor role in protests that were primarily led by the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe. Greenpeace, the defiant David, is hiding behind a woman’s skirt. Who would have thought it was so easy to turn Greenpeace into a sniveling coward and get it to rat out its fellow conspirator. Greenpeace is now crying that the verdict will bankrupt it and force it to refrain from operating in the U.S. Well, hallelujah.

The thing that comes to mind with this verdict is the question of why more companies have not pushed back against the marauding tactics of environmental groups like Greenpeace. That they have not done so is an indictment of our corporate managerial class who would rather pay Danegeld to the Vikings of Greenpeace rather than take them to court for the mischief they cause. The prime culprit is the go-along-to-get-along CEO never uttering a bad word about Greenpeace lest he disturb the sensibilities of someone at a cocktail party.

I would like to see more combative leaders in corporate America willing to take on the Green Blob. It’s not a big ask. Greenpeace and the other environmental groups are not fanatics in the same way as Hamas. They won’t show up at your front step in a suicide vest and blow themselves up. Greenpeace’s foot soldiers are blue-haired girls and pajama boys who see camping out in a pile of garbage at Standing Rock as an adventure. The groups are primarily funded by rich liberal oligarchs, like Bill Gates, (who has recently recalibrated his priorities and slashed funding to environmental groups). One can only hope that if more environmental groups are sued by the companies that they harass, other wealthy donors will reconsider shoveling money into a bottomless pit.

Image: Greenpeace, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons, unaltered.