Rocky Kistner

Despite all the industry hype over jobs and purported energy security benefits from building the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline -- benefits a Brooklyn bridge-builder could propose -- a new report shows the mammoth Canadian tar sands pipeline will cut the amount of gasoline produced in the U.S. and jack up gas prices for American drivers, especially in Midwestern, Great...

An essential mineral ingredient used in a variety of electronics from cell phones to smart bombs could be a death knell for a pristine part of a wild New Mexico desert grassland coveted by environmentalists -- and considered sacred to Native Americans.

That ingredient -- rare earth elements—is at...

Washington’s political wars rarely match reality back home. So when politicians and K Street lobbyists peddle the $7 billion Keystone XL tar sands pipeline, you can bet the red meat rhetoric about jobs and national security -- fanciful charges according to independent analysis -- is straight out of the game plan...

TransCanada’s latest Keystone XL tar sands pipeline plan filed with the U.S. State Department has done nothing to quell local Nebraska opposition to the controversial project to pipe tar sands oil all the way to the Gulf for export. Nebraska residents say the massive pipeline plan still jeopardizes the world’s largest...

The second memorial of the nation’s worst oil catastrophe has come and gone, forever linked to Earth Day and seared into the psyches of millions of Gulf residents and fishermen. In recent weeks, the media has unleashed a torrent of stories about the devastating impacts of the nation’s worst oil spill disaster;

“Never let injustice shut you up. When you see injustice you must stand up. It’s going to hurt sometimes. It’s going to cost you something. But you can never, never allow injustice in your presence and sit silently by and let it happen. You cannot do that.” – Gulf resident...

In the Dakotas, members of the proud Lakota Nation rose in protest this week to join a  48-hour hunger strike in opposition to the Keystone XL pipeline -- and all tar sands pipelines -- they say will destroy precious water resources and ancestral lands in the U.S and in Canada.  

Since BP’s catastrophic oil blowout nearly two years ago, Laurel Lockamy has gotten pretty good at photographing the dead. She’s snapped images of dozens of lifeless turtles and dolphins, countless dead fish, birds, armadillos and nutria and pretty much anything that crawls, swims or flies near the white sandy Mississippi beaches of her...

With news that President Obama will fast track the building of the southern leg of the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline, Texans in its path say their health and property rights are endangered by a torrent of corrosive tar sands oil that will flow from Canada. From landowners in the northern parts of the...

Gloria Trevino doesn’t need a Washington politician to tell her that a daily gusher of Canadian tar sands crude won’t do her air in south Houston any favors. Surrounded by massive petrochemical plants, she and her neighbors in this industrial community already breathe some of the dirtiest air in the country. Her small...

For all the pompous prognostications by Keystone XL tar sands pipeline boosters in Congress about jobs and economic impacts, you don’t have to look much further than the devastated communities of the Kalamazoo River to get to the truth about the dangers this project will pose to America’s heartland....

Down in Texas there’s an old saying; “You can put your boots in the oven but it don’t make them biscuits.”

That’s an expression Washington politicians and their Keystone XL tar sands pipeline allies should take to heart. Texas landowners say they are fed up with the exaggerated claims and false...

As TransCanada announced it would begin building the southern leg of its Keystone XL tar sands oil pipeline from Oklahoma to Texas -- setting the stage for a new Congressional battle over the transnational pipeline -- Michigan residents are worried about a massive tar sands oil spill that persists in...

As Congressional Republicans and Big Oil allies in Washington try to resuscitate the massive Keystone XL tar sands pipeline, people on the front lines have opened a new campaign to stop the massive $7 billion project. In Texas, landowners are locking arms to fight would-be pipeline builder TransCanada over eminent domain cases that may determine where the 1,700-mile project...

Up in the frozen arctic, where polar bears rule over a biogem world, massive oil drilling plans threaten the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Shell, the oil behemoth that made $4.8 billion in profits last quarter, intends to boost those numbers by drilling in the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas off Alaska. And...

Take millions of gallons of natural gas hydro-fracking waste water then pour it down a hole dug thousands of feet down into the bedrock and what do you get? Well, according to the U.S. Department of Energy and other experts, you may get a whole lotta shakin going on. But right now, no regulations are...

About halfway between St. Louis and Chicago, nestled in the fertile corn and soybean fields of Illinois, a quiet electric car revolution is sprouting up in the town of Normal, a town that in some ways is anything but. That’s because this vibrant, forward-looking community of 50,000—along with its adjacent sister city of Bloomington...

The battle over the proposed 1,700 mile Keystone XL pipeline has raged across the political corridors of the nation’s capitol. President Obama rejected the tar sands pipeline yesterday, stating the artificial deadline imposed by Congress did not allow enough time for a careful review. Still, the oil industry and its allies vow to find...

The natural gas industry uses millions of gallons of fresh water for its hydraulic fracturing process, water that becomes contaminated with a witches brew of assorted toxins, carcinogens and low-level radioactive materials. This rising tide of toxic waste water is sometimes disposed of in deep underground wells and is suspected of triggering minor earthquakes in places like Ohio, as NRDC geologist...

As natural gas wells spring up like noxious neighbors across the U.S., rural residents and public officials are increasingly worried about emerging health threats in their communities. The tsunami of gas drilling operations in bucolic areas brings more than increased truck traffic and congestion; locals are now complaining of health problems ranging from asthma and migraines to air...