It’s something we’ve been telling you for years. When Greenpeace talks about “emotionalizing” an issue that means . . . lying about an issue. And there’s been plenty of emotionalizing when it comes to canned tuna over the past year. A court in New Zealand has had it with Greenpeace raising money off of deception and found that when Greenpeace claimed 20,000 birds had died as the result of an oil spill there it wasn’t just mistaken, it was deceiving the public after official figures showed 1,300 birds had died from the spill.

The fund raising model that pushes Greenpeace staffers and volunteers alike to bring in the needed $700,000  a day it takes to keep the lights on, is one that makes them almost compelled to exaggerate or outright lie. Just think about it—you can’t motivate your base to donate by describing the loss of 1,300 birds, so you bump it up to 20,000 and see how that plays.

If Greenpeace could stick to the science and facts rather than fundraising, perhaps it’d be less marginalized in the court of public opinion and spend less time losing in actual court.