Here’s a dose of schadenfreude to brighten your day: Greenpeace has been ordered by a court to pay hundreds of millions of dollars to an oil company.
Now that you’ve had a moment to wipe the tears of laughter from your eyes, here’s what happened.
A North Dakota jury on Wednesday found Greenpeace liable for hundreds of millions of dollars in damages over its role in months-long protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline in 2016 and 2017.
Greenpeace’s lawyers had argued that it had little involvement with the protests, which left literally tons of garbage behind. Nothing, after all, says how much you care for the environment than turning pristine nature into a garbage dump.
The court found that that was yet another Greenpeace lie.
After two days of deliberation, the New York Times reported, the jury returned the verdict. Energy Transfer, the owner and operator of the pipeline, filed the lawsuit in North Dakota state court against Greenpeace and Red Warrior Camp, which Energy Transfer claimed was a front for Greenpeace, and three individuals.
The lawsuit alleges that Greenpeace had engaged in a misinformation campaign with mass emails falsely claiming that the Dakota Access Pipeline would cross the sovereign land of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe.
But these are far from the first porkies Greenpeace has told. In fact, the group have a long history of peddling absolute whoppers. In the mid-’90s, Greenpeace campaigned furiously against plans to scuttle a disused North Sea oil platform, which would have created a beneficial artificial reef. Greenpeace claimed that Brent Spar contained more than 5,000 tonnes oil.
This was a complete falsehood. When the lie was caught out, Greenpeace claimed it was an innocent error and apologised. No doubt the gambit played well to its gullible followers, preserving Greenpeace’s fake aura of saintliness.
But they were far from done lying through their teeth.
Nuclear fusion is the holy grail of energy research. Should self-sustaining reactions be achieved, fusion would be a safe, clean source of abundant energy. Its fuel – hydrogen isotopes – are abundant: one litre of seawater can produce enough to release as much energy as 30 litres of petrol. No CO2, no risk of meltdown, no long-lived dangerous waste...
Greenpeace lies about all of that.
Spokesperson Bridget Woodman said: “Nuclear fusion has all the problems of nuclear power, including producing nuclear waste and the risks of a nuclear accident.”
Which, as veteran tech journalist Andrew Orlowski says, “must break the record for the number of false and contradictory assertions you can cram into a 17-word sentence”. That’s Greenpeace for you.
They don’t restrict their whoppers to fusion, either.
One of the largest environmental advocacy groups in the world has been lying for far too long. Nuclear energy could’ve been the solution to climate change we needed years ago, and Greenpeace continues to advocate against the best interest of the entire world [...]
For a direct example of Greenpeace inflating and directly misrepresenting nuclear energy, look to their reports on Chernobyl. Though disputed, the WHO determined in 2005 that alongside 45 confirmed deaths relating to the accident, there may be up to 4,000 people who died due to fallout-related symptoms out of 600,000 people within the exposure zone. The Greenpeace report on Chernobyl puts this estimated number at 200,000 people. This implies that one in three people within the exposure zone for the Chernobyl incident has died due to radiation causes since the incident occurred in 1986.
Greenpeace’s unhinged fake news has real consequences. Thanks to furious campaigning by Greenpeace and other ‘environmental’ groups, distribution (for free) of ‘Golden rice’ to developing countries was halted. Golden rice is a type of rice modified to produce up to 23 times more beta-carotene, which the body metabolises into vitamin A. In countries where vitamin A deficiency is a huge problem for children, which are often countries where rice is a staple, golden rice could have helped prevent many childhood maladies.
As an open letter from prominent scientists stated, “If ever there was a clear-cut cause for outrage, it is the concerted campaign by Greenpeace and other nongovernmental organizations, as well as by individuals, against golden rice.”
At least they’re finally having to pay for their damaging misinformation campaigns for once.
