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Hollywood star Mark Ruffalo might get angry like the Hulk at hearing this, but his latest “environmental campaign” does nothing but help dictators like Vladimir Putin. Ruffalo is the lead voice of a gaggle of Hollywood stars once again trying to shut down Canada’s oil and gas industry.

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He’s joined by such luminaries as Jane Fonda, Scarlett Johansson, Ben Stiller and the band The Lumineers along with a long list of others. It’s too bad their understanding of global issues isn’t as impressive as their talent on the stage and screen.

They want Royal Bank to stop financing the Coastal GasLink pipeline and have launched a “No More Dirty Banks” campaign claiming that Canada’s biggest bank is profiting from environmental destruction. Just as with his years-long campaign against the Keystone XL pipeline, Ruffalo shows he doesn’t understand that if Canadian oil and gas can’t make it to market, it will be replaced with products from Russia, Venezuela or Saudi Arabia — countries with worse environmental and human rights records.

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This doesn’t matter to Ruffalo and the other Hollywood celebrities. Their interest isn’t in finding a solution, it’s to punish Canada’s natural resources and use First Nations groups as a front while doing so.

“For over a decade, the Wet’suwet’en Hereditary Chiefs, members of the nation and their supporters have protested this pipeline — at significant risk to their own lives,” Ruffalo and the others state boldly in their open letter.

What he doesn’t state is that 16 different First Nations are partners in the Coastal GasLink pipeline. They have an ownership stake in the project. More than 30 First Nations and Metis groups have consulted on the project over the past several years and their input has helped shape the route of the pipeline.

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Ruffalo also doesn’t state that while some hereditary chiefs of the Wet’suwet’en oppose the project, other hereditary chiefs and community members support the project. Just as with the campaigns against Keystone XL, this project is a foreign-funded affair using American money, American celebrities and Canadian First Nations to push a political agenda.

“The groups that are publicizing this, that are the engine of the publicity are Stand Earth, West Coast Environmental Law and others that were at the helm of the Tar Sands campaign,” Vivian Krause said Thursday from Vancouver.

Krause has spent years tracking the influence of American money in Canadian environmental and Indigenous groups opposed to the oil and gas industry. She was the first to expose the 2008 Tar Sands campaign, which brought together groups such as Greenpeace and the World Wildlife Fund with the well funded Rockefeller Brothers Fund and Tides Foundation.

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The entire goal of that campaign was to landlock Canadian oil and gas, which is exactly what Ruffalo is trying to do here.

Keeping Canadian oil and gas in the ground only helps Vladimir Putin. It only solidifies his ability to wage his war in Ukraine just as it has financed his takeover of other parts of the former Soviet Empire. If Coastal GasLink and other projects were operational by now instead of facing constant delays by American-funded campaigns like this, China and India would have alternative, and cleaner, sources of energy from Canada than what is offered by Putin.

Is that something that Ruffalo or Leonardo DiCaprio think of before launching these campaigns?

Obviously, the answer is no. They don’t think before they jet off on a private plane to pick up an award for their good environmental work before vacationing in the Mediterranean or flying to their next movie shoot. If they did step back and think for a moment, they might realize that Canadian oil and gas isn’t part of the problem in the world right now, it’s part of the solution.

blilley@postmedia.com