In the March 19th verdict in Energy Transfer v Greenpeace, a North Dakota county jury awarded more than $660 million to “one of the largest… energy companies in North America” because Greenpeace supported the efforts of Indigenous Water Protectors in their protests of the Dakota Access Pipeline.
This verdict is an outrage because it undermines Tribal leadership and sovereignty. As Natali Segovia, of the Water Protector Legal Collective, said in the New York Times: “At its core, it’s a proxy war against Indigenous sovereignty using an international environmental organization.”
This verdict is an outrage because it threatens First Amendment rights, including the right to free speech.
This verdict is an outrage because it rewards a SLAPP (Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation), an egregious tactic of silencing and intimidation outlawed in 33 states but not in North Dakota.
It’s an outrage that jurors’ conflicts of interest did not disqualify them from service in this trial. It’s a further outrage that one of Energy Transfer’s examples of defamation was Greenpeace’s statement that the Dakota Access Pipeline leaked. The court would not allow an expert witness to testify that the pipeline did, in fact, leak.
Even if Greenpeace wins its appeal, the fact that this suit was allowed to proceed at all is an outrage. This verdict is yet another example of the fossil fuel industry’s agenda being enacted by multiple levels and branches of government. This is more than an outrage. It is a crime that will harm all people and species for generations to come.
We must stand together to overturn this unjust and outrageous verdict. Here at the Union of Concerned Scientists, we’re resisting through Protect the Protest anti-SLAPP taskforce—and by organizing a climate accountability campaign targeting the fossil fuel industry.
I’m imagining a few headlines that might have appeared over the past century if social movements had been SLAPPed for successful campaigns against powerful adversaries.
“City of Montgomery Wins Bus Boycott Suit, Awarded Damages”
What if you’d opened your newspaper in 1957, one year after the Montgomery Bus Boycott had ended and seen this headline. Would you have been outraged?
In reality, the Montgomery Bus Boycott ended in triumph when the City of Montgomery ended racial segregation on its buses. It was coordinated by Dr. Martin Luther King and the Montgomery Improvement Association, with the involvement of key civil rights leaders from Ella Baker to Bayard Rustin. It lasted for 381 days and cost the city approximately $3,000 per day in 1956 dollars—more than $13 million today.
If the city had successfully sued the boycott organizers, would there then have been a Southern Christian Leadership Conference? A Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee? A March on Washington where Dr. King would deliver the speech from which many of our public officials conveniently cherry-pick one quote and one quote only: “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character?”
There might well not have been. And that would have been an outrage.
“Temperance Movement Owes US Lost Revenue, Enforcement Costs During Prohibition”
How about this for a 1934 headline? The 1920 enactment of the 18th constitutional amendment banning the manufacture, sale, or transportation of alcohol followed years of activism and lobbying by the Women’s Christian Temperance Union and the Anti-Saloon League, a powerful coalition that included the International Workers of the World and John D. Rockefeller, the NAACP and the Ku Klux Klan.
The Prohibition era lasted for 13 years. In today’s dollars the total cost to the US government in lost revenue alone would be approximately $222.7 billion.
The consequences of Prohibition went far beyond the cost to federal coffers: among other ill effects, it yielded enormous benefits for organized crime. Do we think today that the broad coalition of Prohibition activists should be held liable for the federal government’s loss of revenue after it enacted their policy demands, or for the tremendous societal costs of strengthened crime syndicates? Or do we think that organizing according to our consciences and beliefs is a fundamental right we must continue to enjoy?
“Boeing Gets $2 Billion in Damages from Machinists Union After 2008 Strike”
No, this didn’t happen. What did: the International Association of Machinists (IAM) struck airplane manufacturer Boeing for eight weeks in 2008, with $1.2 billion in net income lost ($1.48 billion today).
The union struck Boeing again in 2024. Estimated costs for that 53-day action cost Boeing and its suppliers: $9.66 billion.
These are considerable losses for Boeing and the aircraft industry. But the power to strike is the ultimate power of the labor movement. Yes, a prolonged strike costs union members dearly in lost wages and the risk of losing their jobs entirely, but it costs employers dearly too. It’s a game of chicken, and without the ability to strike, the union isn’t driving a car—it’s a pedestrian.
So far, industrial actions such as those taken by the IAM are not subject to the increased power of business to sue for damages. But in an environment where business interests often outweigh the interests of workers, public health and safety, and in the case of climate change, future generations, it’s important to watch closely how juries and courts are thinking about these issues. Because a lot of their thinking is outrageous.
Whose selfish agenda again?
Energy Transfer’s lawyer told the court that Greenpeace had exploited the Dakota Access Pipeline to “promote its own selfish agenda.” I find it hard to contain my outrage.
Greenpeace’s “agenda” is “to ensure the ability of Earth to nurture life in all its diversity.” This is a public-serving mission. Here I speak as one who knows: the Union of Concerned Scientists is a generous employer, but no one is getting into the top 1% of wealth fighting the insatiable greed of the fossil fuel industry.
Energy Transfer’s agenda is “to safely and reliably deliver the energy that makes our lives possible,” as long as that energy comes from transporting, refining, and ultimately burning the fossil fuels that are wreaking climate destruction now and far into the future. This is a profit-seeking mission. Fossil fuel moguls, from the Rockefellers to the Koch Brothers, have made themselves fabulously rich feeding, and feeding off, its insatiable greed.
The confusion of public and private interests, of what’s good for a company versus what’s good for a sovereign Tribal nation, or for all inhabitants of our planet—I can’t find words.
Apart from outrage.