It’s gratifying, is it not, to witness a bully’s tactics being used against him? I’m referring to the lawsuit leveled against Greenpeace by the owners of the Dakota Access Pipeline, who had enough of the multi-million-dollar activist roadshow inciting violent and destructive protests in North Dakota. They’ve decided to hold Greenpeace to account legally.

Greenpeace, of course, is positively indignant anyone should dare push back against their antics. They have characterized the lawsuit as “an existential threat” to their organization. That may be true, since Greenpeace doesn’t create anything of value, specializing instead in breaking, blocking, or vandalizing things of value while using other people’s money. So, naturally, the group is now going to those other people to try and fund its way out of its self-imposed mess.

You must remember the Dakota Access Pipeline. When construction on it began in 2016, energy analysts viewed it as an efficient way to transfer crude oil across four states without having to rely on railroad tanker cars, which can pose greater risks to safety and the environment. Greenpeace viewed it as an opportunity to increase its own profile and raise money from small donors.

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Beginning that summer, Greenpeace started sending out emails to potential donors falsely claiming the pipeline’s construction “would desecrate sacred burial grounds, religious, and other historical sites.” Actually, the pipeline doesn’t cross or encroach any tribal lands, and the North Dakota State Historic Preservation Office found the project affected no historic properties. But those are the kind of facts that could seriously impede a lucrative publicity stunt, and were brushed aside accordingly.

So Greenpeace went ahead and did what it does best — disrupting people’s livelihoods and damaging property in the cause of their own publicity. The group began bragging about its role in training the protestors, importing paid staffers and financially supporting the increasingly violent protests. Ultimately, the pipeline was completed, but not before the protests imposed billions of dollars in delays and repairs, not to mention leaving taxpayers with a $38 million bill for clean-up costs and additional law enforcement.

Care to hazard a guess as to how much Greenpeace contributed to helping clean up the mess they left behind? That’s right, not one cent. A touch bold, I should say, after having helped themselves to millions of dollars in small donations during the pipeline dispute. Spent on what, you ask? Well, according to public tax filings, Greenpeace spent nearly $8 million on outside fundraising consultants in 2022 (which grossed the financial geniuses only $3.5 million — a nearly $4.5 million loss.) And, of course, they had to pay their highly compensated staff, more than a dozen of whom have six-figure annual salaries. By way of comparison, the average salary of a North Dakota worker — now responsible for paying for Greenpeace’s malfeasance — is less than $60,000 per year.

So, the company that constructed the pipeline, Energy Transfer, is suing Greenpeace alleging the organization deliberately lied about the project and helped incite the violent protests that cost the company billions of dollars in equipment damage and project delays. Greenpeace’s response is, not surprisingly, to ask donors for more money. Claiming “Big Oil” is threatening their entire movement, Greenpeace is providing people with an easy way to donate between $50 to $1,000 to them on a monthly basis.

We should resist any temptation toward Schadenfreude, but it’s difficult to feel sympathy for Greenpeace, after decades of raising millions of dollars off orchestrating these sorts of high-profile stunts done for the sole purpose of aggrandizing the organization in the name of environmental puritanism. The group was also among the first to pioneer the weaponization of the legal system in pursuit of its public goals, when the stunts didn’t work. The irony of Greenpeace caterwauling about the prospect of facing financial ruin from a lawsuit and having to “defend itself against lawfare” is priceless.

This is not, as Greenpeace and its cohorts try to assert, an assault on free speech, or the right to protest. One may protest whatever one wishes to, and there is no law against saying even the dumbest things. Tucker Carlson and the New York Times editorial page both serve as proof. The lawsuit is not about protest — it’s about holding accountable those who take protest to more destructive levels.

We are seeing those levels reached with increasing frequency from the environmental extremists. Earlier this summer eco-vandals desecrated Stonehenge, a cultural and historical marvel in England, in the name of environmental activism. Before that, the Mona Lisa was subjected to similar treatment by similar miscreants for similar reasons. Back in 2013, Greenpeace-affiliated activists destroyed a crop of Golden Rice in the Philippines because it was genetically modified. Genetically modified, that is, to prevent Vitamin A deficiency among the country’s undernourished children. Well done, my braves.

Patrick Moore, a Greenpeace founder who saw the light and has since parted ways with the group, summed up the motivations of massive environmental organizations like Greenpeace, writing, “They are primarily focused on creating narratives, stories, that are designed to instill fear and guilt into the public so the public will send them money.” One can hope this current lawsuit will set a precedent — one that will arrest the ability of Luddite organizations like Greenpeace to profit off their fanaticism and their zealous devotion to overturning the industrial revolution, whatever it takes.

Kelly Sloan is a political and public affairs consultant and a recovering journalist based in Denver.