Foresting company punches back after environmental bully’s assault

THE next time you hear about the environmental group Greenpeace lambasting an oil company for wanting to drill a pipeline or decrying the wrongs inflicted on the earth by big business interests, remember the case of Canada-based Resolute Forest Products.

For the past few years, Greenpeace has campaigned mightily against Resolute for being “forest destroyers.” The company’s practices had contributed to climate change and were causing a “caribou death spiral” and extinction in the boreal habitat of Canada, Greenpeace claimed. As part of its smear campaign, Greenpeace also threatened companies that did business with Resolute.

Such tactics have proven highly effective for these environmental extremists. But they didn’t work against Resolute, because the company chose to defend itself by going to court. Resolute, which supplies newsprint for scores of North American newspapers including The Oklahoman, sued in Canada for defamation and intentional interference with economic relations, and in the United States it sued under RICO statutes.

At that point, as company president and CEO Richard Garneau noted recently at National Review Online, Greenpeace “started changing their tune.”

In its latest legal filings, Greenpeace says its criticisms of Resolute’s forestry practices “do not hew to strict literalism of scientific precision.” Greenpeace concedes that no “forest loss” was caused by Resolute. The accusations leveled against the company instead were “hyperbole,” “heated rhetoric” and “non-verifiable statements of subjective opinion” that shouldn’t be taken literally or expose the organization to legal liability.

“Finally hearing the truth from Greenpeace itself is vindication,” Garneau wrote, “even if it comes in the form of a tortured defense of its actions, rather than a simple apology.”

This mea culpa also rings a bit hollow because the activist group hasn’t stopped disparaging Resolute. Garneau wrote that just a few weeks ago, his company sent a cease-and-desist letter demanding that Greenpeace “stop sending to our customers threatening letters accusing us of the ‘destruction of forests in Quebec and Ontario.’”

It’s easy for groups like Greenpeace to paint giant companies as faceless demons, but Garneau said he takes these attacks personally because his family has multi-generational ties to the region of Canada where Resolute is based. In fact, “I harvested trees by hand to pay my way through school.”

“Greenpeace is marauding not just our company but a way of life, one built on nurturing healthy forests that are the lifeblood of the people who live here,” Garneau wrote.

Numerous groups and individuals have written Greenpeace, asking that the misinformation campaign be stopped. In almost every case, Garneau said, letter writers received no reply. Last summer, about 5,000 people marched in a small town in northern Quebec asking Greenpeace to stop. Local leaders sought a sitdown with the activists. “It is telling that Greenpeace neither showed up nor responded,” he wrote.

The Resolute CEO vows to “stand tall, both in public discourse and in the courts.” Bullies don’t like it when they get punched in the nose, and that’s exactly what Resolute has done by deciding to put Greenpeace in its place. Tres bon!