On Sunday, The Wall Street Journal reported that a Texas-based billionaire owner of a pipeline company named Kelcy Warren may end up shutting down Greenpeace USA resulting from litigation he’s brought against the environmentalist group.

The Journal says Warren’s company, Energy Transfer, is pursuing legal action against Greenpeace USA, claiming that during 2016, their various groups affiliated with them financed attacks on the Dakota Access Pipeline and spread false information about the company and its project. During that period, the pipeline was a central issue in the environmental movement’s opposition to large fossil fuel edifices (like pipelines) that was eventually completed in 2017.

In 2016, the WSJ says eco-terrorists gathered at the North Dakota pipeline construction site to prevent the $3.8 billion project from proceeding, leading to occasional violent confrontations between protesters and law enforcement. The lawsuit, which demands $300 million in damages, could potentially devastate Greenpeace USA, but it does not threaten Greenpeace’s international operations because the organization’s primary governing body in the Netherlands does not hold assets in the U.S.

Initially, the company attempted to file the lawsuit in federal court but had to refile in state court after the federal judge dismissed the original case. The WSJ reports Energy Transfer is pursuing this legal action under racketeering statutes (i.e. RICO) that were used against organized crime syndicates.

Warren’s lawsuit further alleges, the Journal says, that Greenpeace USA was largely to blame for delaying the pipeline’s construction and causing Energy Transfer millions of dollars in additional costs. Greenpeace, however, argues that the lawsuit could suppress free speech and insists that it merely supported the protests against the pipeline. None the less, one possibility the group is preparing for is bankruptcy if the legal outcome is not favorable to them.

It is high time someone stood up to groups like Greenpeace and, hopefully, the affects of Kelcy Warren’s lawsuit will be sufficient to put the brakes on a lot of unethical, if not outright illegal, conduct on the part of environmentalist groups. What Greenpeace and other climate cult groups do to companies, like Energy Transfer, is wrong and not within the bounds of protected speech. Mr. Warren is right that eco-terrorist groups should pay for their misconduct.