Environmental defenders rallied behind Greenpeace after the shock ruling by a North Dakota jury fuelled concerns that courtrooms were increasingly being used to smother critics.
"It sends a dangerous message: that fossil fuel giants can weaponize the courts to bankrupt and silence those who challenge the destruction of our planet," said Anne Jellema, executive director of advocacy group 350.org.
The judgement "is not only an attack on Greenpeace -- it is an assault on the entire climate movement, clearly intended to chill the resistance to fossil fuels", she added in a written statement to AFP.
Ana Caistor Arendar from rights monitor Global Witness said it was "an existential threat to activism, protest and to land and environmental defenders, not just in the US, but everywhere".
Energy Transfer (ET), the Texas-based pipeline operator that was awarded the damages, has denied any attempt to stifle free speech by suing Greenpeace.
The company had accused the environmental advocacy group of orchestrating violence and defamation during the construction of the contentious Dakota Access Pipeline project nearly a decade ago.
- 'Unconscionable' -
From 2016 to 2017, the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe led one of the largest anti-fossil fuel protests in US history against the pipeline, and the demonstrations saw hundreds arrested and injured.
The jury awarded more than $660 million in damages across three Greenpeace entities, citing charges including trespass, nuisance, conspiracy, and deprivation of property access.
Greenpeace has vowed to appeal and continue its advocacy work.
Brice Bohmer from Transparency International, a global corruption watchdog, said the lawsuit was "unconscionable" and evidence of a much wider problem.
"This kind of activity is becoming increasingly common across climate action, with fossil fuel actors undermining progress wherever possible," he said.
ET initially sought $300 million in damages through a federal lawsuit, which was dismissed.
It then shifted its legal strategy to state courts in North Dakota -- one of the minority of US states without protections against so-called "Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation" or SLAPPs.
Throughout the years-long legal fight, ET's billionaire CEO Kelcy Warren, a major donor to President Donald Trump, was open about his motivations, saying in interviews that he wanted to "send a message".
Tasneem Essop, executive director of Climate Action Network International, a coalition of nearly 2,000 non-government organisations, said the verdict should "worry us all".
- Fight on -
Matilda Flemming, director of Friends of the Earth Europe, said she was "appalled" by the outcome but warned it was not an isolated case.
"The right to protest is under threat across the world, from big corporations and self-interested politicians who threaten our democracies," she said.
Greenpeace International is counter-suing ET in the Netherlands, accusing the company of nuisance lawsuits to stifle dissent.
Rebecca Brown, president and CEO of the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL), said the fight for environmental justice would go on.
"No abusive company, lawsuit, or court decision will change that," she said in a statement on Wednesday after the verdict was handed down.
Oil Change International echoed that tone: "We will continue to resist and hold corporations accountable because our future depends on it," said the group's US campaign manager Collin Rees.
Greenpeace's biggest operations
Paris (AFP) Mar 20, 2025 -
The environmental advocacy group Greenpeace, ordered by a US jury to pay more than $660 million in damages to an oil pipeline company, has built its reputation on often astonishing operations on land and at sea that captured headlines around the world.
- 1971: underground nuclear test -
Greenpeace was born with a bang on September 15, 1971 when a crew of 12 Canadians and Americans set out from Vancouver Island in an 80-foot boat called the Phyllis Cormack, which was renamed Greenpeace, with the aim of halting US nuclear tests.
Their mission was to steam to the Aleutian island of Amchitka and protest, or even prevent, the detonation of a test.
The boat didn't make it to Amchitka. US president Richard Nixon delayed the test and the crew were arrested in the Aleutian port of Akutan by the US Coastguard on a technicality. The following year Washington abandoned the site for nuclear testing.
- 1985: The Rainbow Warrior -
Greenpeace's Rainbow Warrior ship was bombed by French agents in Auckland harbour on July 10, 1985.
The French secret service blew two holes in the Rainbow Warrior's hull, sinking the vessel and killing Greenpeace photographer Fernando Pereira.
Paris wanted to halt Greenpeace plans to disrupt French nuclear tests in Polynesia.
The sinking of the original Warrior is seen as a key event in Pacific history, leading to the end of nuclear testing on the islands.
- 1983: baby seals -
Greenpeace was a major player in the 1980s campaigns targeting Canada over the hunting of baby seals.
Its teams went to the ice floe in Newfoundland and tracked from a helicopter the icebreakers of baby seal hunters.
On March 2, 1983, the activists stopped before the bow of one of the ships carrying the youngest seals, whose white fur changes to grey-black after a few weeks.
The images worked: the then European Economic Community banned imports of the seal fur.
- 2013: board oil rig -
Greenpeace activists climbed onto the Prirazlomnaya oil rig in the Arctic on September 18, 2013 to protest against plans to drill for oil by Russian giant Gazprom in the region, which has particularly fragile ecosystems.
The 30 team members were detained in Russia. Only 100 days later were the foreign activists allowed to leave the country.
- 2017: break into nuclear plant -
Before dawn on October 12, 2017, Greenpeace activists broke into a French nuclear power plant and set off fireworks at the foot of a spent fuel pool -- where nuclear plants store highly radioactive fuel rods that are removed from reactors after their use.
The stunt at the plant in Cattenom, near the border with Luxembourg, was intended to show the facility's vulnerability to attack.
Since the 2000s, Greenpeace has carried out numerous break-ins. An activist flew in 2012 over the plant at Bugey southern France in an ultralight plane.
Greenpeace said that the Cattenom break-in resulted in the first prison sentences against its activists, which on appeal were amended to fines.
- 2019: refinery blocked -
Towards 6:00 am on October 29, 2019 around 50 Greenpeace activists wearing orange blocked the entrance to a refinery in La Mede in southern France, where oil giant Total used controversial palm oil to produce biofuel.
They placed two large orange containers in front of the entrance, with a protester chaining themselves to each.
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