Greenpeace Faces Existential Threat in Lawsuit Over Anti-Pipeline Radicalism * WorldNetDaily * by Bob Unruh

Greenpeace is one of the most visible environmental organizations in the world.

Launched in Canada over 50 years ago, it is actively involved in the fight against global warming, deforestation, fishing, whaling and more.

But the company’s U.S. arm now faces an existential threat in the form of a lawsuit over its collaboration with others, including Native American tribes, to attack the Dakota Access Pipeline, a 1,200-mile pipeline project to transport crude oil from the Bakken Shale field to Illinois.

According to the Wall Street Journal, fossil fuel billionaire Kelcy Warren appears poised to deliver a “knockout punch” to the organization.

His company, Energy Transfer, was behind the pipeline and his lawsuit is against the Greenpeace group’s obstruction.

He is seeking $300 million in damages for the project, which was eventually completed.

The confrontations began in 2016, when Greenpeace, Native American tribes and others literally camped out in North Dakota to obstruct work on the project.

“Warren sees green activists, who he once was supposed to remove ‘from the gene pool,’ as a serious threat to the industry. Starting with protests against Keystone XL, which successfully killed that project, activists have targeted pipelines across the country,” the report explained.

He said in an earlier interview: “Everyone is afraid of these environmental groups and the fear that it will look wrong if you fight back with these people. But what they did to us is wrong, and they are going to pay for it.”

His net worth is estimated at $7 billion and his lawsuit alleges that Greenpeace groups fueled the Dakota Access protests, “funded attacks to damage the pipeline and spread misinformation about the company and its project,” the report said.

In February, the system will be tested in North Dakota, an area where fossil fuels are most favorable.

Greenpeace claims it played a limited role in the protests, but leaders acknowledge that the threat of massive damage makes the case an existential one.

“Greenpeace says the loss of its subsidiary – and influence – in the US would have a profound impact on the group’s ability to tackle climate change,” the report said.

Native American tribes claimed the pipeline posed a threat to sacred sites and drinking water.

The report noted: “According to Warren, Greenpeace was largely responsible for a construction delay that cost the company millions of dollars, and Energy Transfer sued the group for $300 million under a law designed to prosecute the mafia, allowing the company to claim three times that amount. When a federal judge dismissed the lawsuit, the company filed a new one in a North Dakota state court.”

A Greenpeace official said a negative outcome would set a “really dangerous precedent” for the environmental group.

Greenpeace, which has admitted it could lose the lawsuit, has prepared emergency measures, including bankruptcy.

Bob Onruh

Bob Unruh joined WND in 2006 after nearly three decades at the Associated Press and various newspapers in the Upper Midwest, where he covered everything from legislative battles and sports to tornadoes and murderous survivalists. He is also a photographer whose landscape work has been used commercially. Read more articles by Bob Unruh here.