Rocky Kistner's blog

When the Hercules Offshore Inc. gas well  blew and caught fire  last week, spewing natural gas and flames into the air 50 miles off the Gulf coast, many in the nearby fishing communities had another sickening feeling of déjà vu.

More than two months after ExxonMobil’s 65-year-old Pegasus pipeline burst and spewed a gusher of thick Canadian tar sands oil through Mayflower, AR, and into a marsh on Lake Conway—the state’s most popular fishing spot—residents are still complaining of health problems and are worried about poisonous impacts on wildlife and in the environment. Many locals and some scientists have little faith in the continuous rosy assurances from Exxon and the Unified Command that

Rocky Kistner

Jun 05 2013

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Amber Bartlett had just finished reading a book in her Mayflower, AR, home when she got a call from her teenage daughter that she will never forget; police had stopped her from entering their subdivision because of a dangerous oil spill in the neighborhood. Amber looked out her window in disbelief, but there it was, a river of thick, black noxious crude oil gushing down the street near her driveway, forming little waves as it lapped over the sewer drain.

As Congress stumbles through an embarrassing year-end game of fiscal brinkmanship, the world continues its slow burn toward unchartered and dangerous territory. It’s a future that threatens us all with more cataclysmic storms, punishing drought, mind-boggling Arctic ice melts, and more ferocious fires and floods. Scientists say future years to come will only get worse as we continue to spew billions of tons of climate-altering carbon pollution into the air.  

An oil platform explosion and fire today near the site of the nation’s greatest offshore oil spill in history—BP’s Deepwater Horizon—sent shivers up the spines of many Gulf residents as the U.S. Coast Guard reported that 11 crewmembers were flown to area hospitals and two crewmembers were still missing as of Friday evening. News reports said four workers were critically injured with burns.

Down in the Louisiana bayou, people have first-hand knowledge of the kind of suffering a maelstrom like Superstorm Sandy brings. After the titanic tempest slammed into northeast coastal communities, killing more than 100 and making thousands homeless, people in the Gulf could feel their pain.

Cajun fishing and hunting guide Ryan Lambert has weathered his share of storms over the years. He rebuilt his house and lodge deep in the Louisiana bayou seven years ago after Katrina rampaged across the area like a wild boar through roseau cane. Two years later, he struggled to rebuild his fishing business decimated by the BP oil spill—a business that today still reels from a lack of trophy-sized speckled trout famous to fishermen all over the country.

Across the nation’s breadbasket, many farmers are out of time waiting for cooling rains to salvage crops blistered by one of the hottest and driest summers on record. But up in the frigid arctic, another battle with nature is playing out; the race against ice.

In Canada's western province of Alberta, Melina Laboucan-Massimo’s community—the Lubicon Lake Nation—has endured a withering toxic tar sands oil assault, an Armageddon against nature few Americans are fully aware of. Here in the once pristine sub-Arctic, tar sands mining operations level vast swaths of boreal forests near native lands, as 

Rocky Kistner

Jul 12 2012

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This week, much of the globe’s attention is focused on the United Nation’s Rio +20 Earth Summit, where thousands of international delegates and NGO representatives are gathering to hammer out solutions to an increasingly stressed out, warmed-up world.