Oil Oligarchs Are Targeting Greenpeace. We Must Stop Them.

Code Red for climate: Billionaire Kelcy Warren is trying to bankrupt one of the most storied environmental organizations in the world.

As people focus on the election, a serious and even existential threat to the entire climate movement is brewing. 

One of the most important environmental organizations in the world — Greenpeace — is under vicious attack from fossil fuel billionaires. Many know that after Chevron targeted me with the nation's first corporate prosecution - leading to 993 days of illegal detention - I get really angry when corporations bully activists. It is critical that everyone who cares about the planet and the freedom to advocate step up now to defend Greenpeace. This is a code red moment. 

The facts: billionaire pipeline mogul Kelsey Warren (pictured), who owns the Energy Transfer Pipeline Company, filed a patently bogus $300m retaliation lawsuit against Greenpeace. After years of litigation, the case is scheduled for trial in February in North Dakota. (Warren also gave millions to Trump's campaigns.) The claims were manufactured by the same Gibson Dunn law firm that Chevron hired to go after me. It's part of the corporate playbook: abuse the legal system to tie up climate activists with harassing lawsuits. But this is worse: Greenpeace USA might actually have to shut down if Warren succeeds. 

Warren is still bitter that the Indigenous-led Standing Rock protests in 2016-17 delayed construction of his company's awful Dakota Access pipeline, which already is poisoning waters on ancestral lands. Greenpeace played a small role in the protests. But Warren's lawyers claim the organization "incited" the protests through its advocacy. This is a fundamentally racist claim invented by Warren to try to erase the role of Indigenous leadership. It's also a direct attack on the right to protest.

For those who don't know, Greenpeace captured the world's imagination in the 1970s when its activists risked their lives by blocking industrial-sized whaling from their tiny Zodiac rafts in the North Pacific. The organization now has offices in 40 countries with millions of members. It is one of the most storied, creative, and effective justice organizations in the world.

To help Greenpeace stop this legal abuse, please click this link. I will be following this closely.

-Steven