The U.S. and much of the Western world have a dirty secret.

While we claim to be working diligently to decrease our emissions and switch to cleaner, non-fossil fuel energies, we are actually just exporting emissions to other countries, most notably China. We don’t talk about it. We get on our soapboxes at international meetings and claim to be making great progress to halt ever-increasing carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere. And we complain vociferously about developing countries — again, most notably China — not doing the same.

Geoscientists Predict a Dry, Dusty Future for the American West

Haboobs walloped Arizona last summer. Locals long ago adopted the Arabic word for a major dust storm, but even old-timers say they can’t remember anything quite like this year’s aerial assaults.

Humans have harnessed wind energy throughout history for milling, pumping and transportation — in a way you could say it’s the “original” form of industrial energy. But only recently have we built massive, powerful turbines to convert that wind into electricity. As concerns about pollution, carbon emissions, resource depletion and energy security mount, wind farms are an increasingly attractive alternative for meeting growing energy demand.

A saltwater disposal well, a part of the natural gas production process, may have been responsible for triggering a series of minor earthquakes in the Dallas-Fort Worth area of Texas in 2008, according to a recent study.

Hurricane Ike’s damage to Gulf Coast oil industries was not as bad as authorities had feared, the Department of Energy stated in a report released Monday.

Hurricane Ike roared into southeastern Texas early Saturday morning as a strong Category-2 storm, with 170 kilometer-per-hour (110 mph) winds. But due to a last-minute veer to the east, the populous region between Galveston and Houston narrowly avoided the worst of the storm.

Meteorologists had feared the region would encounter the “dirty side” of Ike, a nickname for the hurricane’s northeast quadrant that combines the speed of its overall northeasterly movement with the powerful winds of Ike’s counterclockwise spin.

As residents of Galveston, Texas, scramble to evacuate before Hurricane Ike makes landfall tonight, most Houston residents have been told to stay put. But even Houston — about 130 kilometers (80 miles) to the northeast — is in for some extreme weather tomorrow.

"This is our generation’s Sputnik moment,” declared President Barack Obama in the 2011 State of the Union address, challenging the nation to pursue a future of cleaner energy.

As we did a generation ago, we now face significant challenges — challenges that need to be met sooner rather than later to protect and grow our economy, build energy autonomy and preserve our resources for future generations. These challenges center on two resources: energy and water.