Chuck Nelson mined coal seams deep below the Appalachian hills of Boone County, West Virginia, for nearly 30 years before dark powder and chemical particulates drove him from his home – and to the other side of the contentious coal debate.

“Whenever the wind would blow, it would bring big clouds of black dust that would cover everything in your house,” Mr Nelson, 52, said. “We didn’t want to leave, but then again, if you stayed there, you’re breathing this fine dust. The dust you’d see on your table and stuff wasn’t the dust that was hurting you – it was the dust that you can’t see, thefine particles.”

Although the dust that hounded Mr Nelson and his neighbours was coming from a coal-cleaning facility, the retired miner says the mining of coal – especially the mountaintop removal method, which reshapes vistas, annihilates ecosystems and, in some cases, poisons water – is similarly destroying communities throughout the region.

Mountaintop mining involves clear-cutting mountains and removing their peaks to get at relatively thin seams of coal that are often high quality but too shallow to deep mine. The extra dirt and rock is dumped in nearby valleys, where it can clog streams.

Despite the efforts of mining companies to clean up exhausted mountaintop mine sites, the most biologically diverse temperate hardwood forests on Earth are, for the most part, replaced with non-native grasses and invasive shrubs, and toxic sludge ponds dot the landscape, according to Vivian Stockman, of the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition.

The mining method that has divided West Virginia and other Appalachian coal states is just one facet of a debate that is gearing up to be as heated as health care reform, as lawmakers consider climate-inspired legislation that would fundamentally redefine the nation’s relationship with coal.

Coal has been dubbed the dirtiest of the fossil fuels. Deep mining is dangerous work and surface mining is environmentally hazardous, cleaning it requires toxic chemicals, and in the United States, coal burned for fuel releases more than a third of the country’s carbon dioxide emissions, which cause global warming. Worldwide, coal burned primarily for fuel is responsible for about 20 per cent of all greenhouse gas emissions, according to the Pew Center on Climate Change.

Burning coal also lets off air pollutants, such as sulphur and nitrogen oxide, which have respiratory and cardiac health implications, according to Alan Ducatman, a doctor and professor at the University of West Virginia.

Coal and mining also release mercury, selenium and other elements and compounds that poison water, cause illness and deform fish.

“Extraction, transportation, the cleaning, the burning – every bit of it kills people,” Mr Nelson, the retired miner, said.

Still, Americans and the rest of the world depend on coal. It is the source of about half the nation’s electricity and about 40 per cent of the world’s electricity, according to the US government and the Word Coal Institute. The United States is sitting on about a quarter of the world’s coal reserves, and US coal alone has more potential energy than all of the world’s known recoverable oil together, although reserve estimates may be undergoing a downwards revision.

“We are the Saudi Arabia of coal,” Barack Obama, the US president, said during his campaign last year, acknowledging US dependence on the fuel source when he vowed to fund research on technology that would capture the carbon dioxide released by burning coal and store it instead of letting it into the atmosphere.

His administration has already pumped billions of dollars into such research, and more is likely to result from legislation in Congress now, though it could be years or even decades before wide use of this “clean coal” technology is possible.

The House of Representatives narrowly passed a climate bill last month and the Senate is expected to consider similar legislation when it returns from recess in September. Debate could turn passionate, partly because there is a huge chasm between liberal and conservative views about what is necessary to minimise climate change, and also because oil companies and other industry groups are organising their employees and others to protest against the legislation.

This week about 3,500 energy workers attended an anti-climate-bill rally in Houston, Texas. The rally, sponsored by a coalition of oil and other companies and groups, was reportedly part of a multistate campaign opposing the bill.

In line with Mr Obama’s campaign promises, the legislation requires the implementation of a cap-and-trade system that would require heavy polluters to purchase the right to emit greenhouse gasses beyond a set allowance. The companies would presumably pass those costs on to consumers, and the system would admittedly change the way coal businesses operate.

“The coal industry is under attack and West Virginia is ground zero for that attack,” Bill Raney, the president of the West Virginia Coal Association, an industry group, wrote in a recent editorial for an industry publication called Mountaintop Mining.

West Virginia produces more coal than any state besides Wyoming, where the geology dictates a type of mining that has not drawn as much criticism from environmentalists and neighbouring rural populations as mountaintop removal has in Appalachia.

Speaking at his office in Charleston, West Virginia, Mr Raney said the climate bill in Congress had not been thought through. “It punishes the American people,” he said, referring to higher electricity costs for consumers. “I can’t see punishing the American people in this kind of economy.”

He also worries about those working in the mining industry. Although the number of direct miners in West Virginia has fallen from a peak of 120,000 in the 1920s to fewer than 20,000 today, Mr Raney says speciality contractors – electricians, mechanics, engineers, lorry drivers – make up another 35,000 jobs in a state with a population of about 1.8 million.

In his editorial, Mr Raney said, “left-wing radicals, professional protesters, a biased news media, federal agencies and the Obama administration” are attacking the coal industry with the goal of “bringing an end to the use of coal as an energy source”.

Indeed, that is what some people want. Al Gore, the former US vice president, supports moving towards an energy grid fed entirely by renewable fuel sources, such as the sun, wind, geothermal energy and water. He has said it is impossible to keep burning coal without sequestering the carbon dioxide, and that is not a technical reality at this point. “‘Clean coal’ is like ‘healthy cigarettes’ – it does not exist,” he said last year.

Greenpeace’s Michael Crocker worries that carbon sequestration technologies will come too late to avert climate disaster. Greenpeace and other environmental groups opposed the House bill, saying it set emissions caps too low and then further undermined the already lenient targets by letting polluters offset their emissions with activities that reduce greenhouse gases.

“It’s a massive giveaway to the coal industry – there’s just no getting around it,” Mr Crocker said. “It’s light years away from what the science says is needed. It’s a transfer of wealth from the taxpayer to companies that are already doing quite well.”

Dan Weiss, of the Center for American Progress, supports the current legislation and notes that even if Americans were weaned off coal, the fossil fuel would still be used in other countries, notably China and India, which together account for nearly half of coal consumption and are building new coal-powered plants at a blistering rate.

“We do need to develop carbon-capture-and-store technology, not only for the United States, but so it can be used in other counties as well,” he said.

Mr Nelson, the retired miner, maintains that coal, left alone in forest-covered mountains, is the best possible carbon sequestration, but he acknowledges that at this point, the United States is far too dependent on coal to just quit using it.

“You can’t just shut it down, because it supplies our electricity,” he said. “But we need to phase out coal because of the climate crisis. We want them to deep mine, if they’re going to mine.”

* The National

Every so often, a young woman with a US$30 (Dh110) pair of broken high heels walks into Joe Apkarian’s shop and asks if he can fix the heel. Of course he can.

Mr Apkarian and others in the industry say such customers – many of whom have never had a pair of shoes fixed – are coming to cobblers more often these days, as tighter budgets hit consumers.

“Will I see them again? I don’t know,” Mr Apkarian said. But long-time customers have to be first-time customers first, and for a new wave of first-time customers, cobblers have the recession to thank.

“Whenever people don’t have money coming in, they try to repair things – that’s obvious,” the Syrian-born Armenian cobbler said at his shoe and luggage repair shop on a small street in a well-off neighbourhood of the US capital.

While many shoe repair shops throughout the US reported higher profits last fall and winter – the best seasons for cobblers – it does not stop at shoes.

Fewer Americans are buying new cars, and that has been a boon for some auto mechanics. Less eager to run out and buy a new stereo, television or computer, more Americans are turning to electronics technicians. Basically, Americans are fixing things more.

This year will see the lowest number of auto sales in decades, according to Standard & Poor’s – sales were down more than 35 per cent last month alone. As a result, cars on the road are getting older.

A recent RL Polk report has found US passenger vehicles now have a median age of 9.4 years, compared to 9.2 last year and 8.3 in 2001.

“People are keeping their cars longer, and to keep a car longer, of course you have to do the necessary repairs to keep it safe,” said Angie Wilson of the Automotive Service Association, a group that represents independent car mechanics. “Overall, our members are saying that they are seeing an increase.”

In an informal ASA survey last fall, more than 60 per cent of the group’s members reported that business was better in 2008 than the year before, and two-thirds expected 2009 to be even better. Not all mechanics are seeing the rise, and some report having to help customers who cannot afford all the necessary work to prioritise repairs. But for many, business is good.

The same is true for the Geek Squad, which provides computer, television, appliance and gadget installation and repair. The company says it has 20,000 technicians in the US alone, easily making it the largest provider of these services.

“The per cent of our business going to repair has been increasing since the end of last year, and we also find people are coming to us for advice: ‘Should I repair or replace?’” said Paula Baldwin, a spokeswoman for the company. The Geek Squad recently added a Fix or Replace Calculator to its website.

Only time will tell if American consumers are changing their ways for good, but for now cobblers and others welcome the new momentum – even those who have seen no increase in business but recognise that a lack of decline is already an achievement in this tough economy.

Mr Apkarian reported only slightly higher profits, partly because his business was already strong. “In this area, they all wear good shoes to start with,” he said of the neighbourhoods around his shop. People who buy $500 shoes know to take care of them.

Lately, however, more people are bringing in their $40, $50 and $60 shoes for repair – shoes that a couple of years ago they might have tossed and replaced, he said. And this is giving a struggling industry a much-needed lifeline.

Randy Lipson, of the Shoe Service Institute of America, says many Americans do not know what cobblers can do. “Even if they’re not the most expensive shoes, if somebody likes them and they’re comfortable, we can help them – although people don’t know that.”

Shoe repairers agree that it does not make financial sense to pay for repairs on a $10 pair of shoes, but touching up the leather, fixing a buckle, re-attaching a strap, capping a heel and weather proofing can all extend the life of well-loved pair of $30 shoes, and Mr Lipson’s trying to get the word out by telling young customers to tell their friends about shoe repair.

He is also working to establish some type of formal programme in the United States to train cobblers, most of whom are immigrants who received the bulk of their education in their home countries. US cobblers are, by and large, an older bunch. Some fear the trade will die out with their generation.

In addition to sitting on SSIA boards, Mr Lipson is a third-generation cobbler who is seeing about 10 per cent more business at his St Louis, Missouri-area shop compared to last year.

Like Mr Apkarian, Mr Lipson deals in a lot of high-end shoe repair, but he believes many younger people would be interested to learn that a shoe repair shop may be able to make well-worn trendy Uggs look new.

The Christian Louboutin crowd may or may not already know that a good cobbler can preserve the redness of the trademark red soles, he noted. Mr Lipson thinks cobblers should work with new styles – and be grateful for gifts like pointy toes, because such designs frequently need reinforcement and repair.

Mr Lipson does not have hard data but has heard from a good number of cobblers that business is up at many of the estimated 7,000 shoe repair shops in the US. Optimistically, he thinks shoe repair outlets can hold onto the new customers they get in a recession, and, by staying current, win over the younger generation.

That seems to be working for Jorge Peña, who has recently done so well on U Street – a popular and young part of town – that he’s opened a second shop in the nearby neighbourhood of Columbia Heights, which is similarly young and fashionable. Mr Apkarian, the Washington cobbler, recalls about 20 years ago, when “the shoe repair industry was going from bad to worse – lots of cheap shoes were showing up, people didn’t care – they only cared about style.”

He became a certified orthopaedist at that time, figuring people with special footwear needs would always be around.

“The young people don’t realise that, yeah, they’re saving money today, but they’re going to come back and pay it to me later on in life because their feet are messed up and they’re going to need special things put in their shoes,” he said.

RISHIKESH, INDIA // The daily flood of Indian families into the holy city of Rishikesh is PL Kothari’s boon – and part of a lifeline for a fading technology.

Mr Kothari sells the trademark yellow and green boxes of Kodak and Fuji film to pilgrims, who snap shots of ashrams and take family portraits on the iconic Lakshman Jula, a footbridge that crosses over the sacred Ganges as it flows down from the Himalayan foothills.

While he is seeing a trend towards more people using their mobile phones to take snapshots these days, purchases of film and film-based cameras at his store have remained constant, he said.

Nationally, demand in India for film is falling by roughly 30 to 35 per cent a year, according to Koji Wada, a marketing adviser at FujiFilm India, but that decline – mostly in urban centres – is not universal, he said. That is good news for Kodak and Fuji, who have seen demand for film plummet over the last decade with the advent of digital cameras. This week, Kodak retired Kodachrome, its first commercially successful colour film, after more than 70 years of production.

Some of the world’s most famous colour photos – including that of Sharbat Gula, the “Afghan Girl” whose photograph by Steve McCurry appeared on the cover of National Geographic magazine in 1985 – as well as many family slide shows in the 1960s and 1970s have been printed on Kodachrome.

However, it was the only film in which the dyes that bring colour to the images had to be added during processing. “There’s this whole infrastructure around Kodachrome beyond just the film,” said Grant Steinle, the vice president of operations at Dwayne’s Photo in Parsons, Kansas, the only lab in the world that processes the film. “You might have 20 different components … and you have to do ongoing analyses on the chemical constituents in the chemicals you’re using. Kodak is the only company that manufactures the dye set, and they’re discontinuing that as well.”

Of course the catalyst for all of this is digital. Kodak said it earns 70 per cent of its profit from digital. Worldwide, internet habits have played a large role in the move to digital. In the West and other parts of Asia, millions of people share their photos on social networking sites.

“Facebook is the largest depository, if you will, of digital images right now,” said Gary Pageau, of PMA, a US-based trade association for the photographic industry. “It’s the largest photo site there is.”

Despite the country’s strengths in information technology, less than five per cent of Indians have ever used the internet and only about four per cent actively go online, according to figures published in January by the internet and Mobile Association of India.

That is low compared to other countries, such as China, where more than 20 per cent of the total population uses the internet, according to government statistics. More than half of all Americans went online last month alone, according to figures from Nielsen Online.

In addition, the vast majority of Indian internet users live in cities, which may explain why rolls of Kodak and Fuji film are especially popular in the countryside.

Rama Malik, of Kodak India, said the decline her company sees in otherwise strong film sales is “primarily in the urban markets” – the same ones that she sees “transitioning to digital”.

Interestingly, there has been minimal decline in the demand for photographic paper, according to Fuji’s Mr Wada, which suggests that digital photographers in India may still regularly print out their pictures.

Mr Wada said the most popular type of photos in India – even at the village level – are of weddings and other special events, where the prints remain the purpose of the shot, whether the professional photographer uses a film or digital camera.

Although, as Mr Kothari, the shop owner in Rishikesh noticed, more people are using mobile phones for snapshots, the phones themselves cannot replace a good camera, Mr Wada said, based on his observations of both the Japanese and the Indian markets.

Phones can offer higher mega-pixels “but quality is not based only on that”, he added. “It is necessary to have a good lens and software to get better photos.”

Phones and cameras have different uses, said Ms Malik, of Koadk India: phones may capture spontaneous images, but people will always prefer cameras to photograph new babies or weddings.

There is little doubt that India will eventually go digital.

Mr Pageau, of the industry group, said it was just a matter of when.

“There comes a point – and in different countries it’s a different point – where the value of digital is far superior to that of analogue for most people in most cases, and then the market chooses,” he said. “There’s never been a chemical process that has survived the onslaught of a digital one.”

Mr Pageau still sees opportunity in film, but he does not see the technology sustaining itself worldwide over the next 20 years. Indeed, the retiring of Kodachrome may prove an early major step in the shift.

Mr Kothari would agree – although he is not worried about his customers going digital any time soon.

Rolls of film in India can cost anywhere from less than 100 rupees (Dh7.5) to more than 200 rupees, and Mr Kothari estimates that he sells about 10 a day. He also usually sells one or two 500-rupee film-based cameras.

He has started selling digital memory cards, too, but for now, he says, only foreign tourists buy them.

WASHINGTON // When Michelle Obama recently made news for breaking ground on the first White House vegetable garden in 60 years, she was in good company.

About 43 million American households plan to grow their own vegetables this year, a near 20 per cent rise over last year, according to the National Gardening Association (NGA), and seed companies are reporting unprecedented sales.

“There seems to be a movement in our country in the direction of either shopping for locally grown vegetables or growing your own vegetables and produce,” said Rick Burns, a lawyer, who will be among seven million new home gardeners this year in the United States.

Alisa Keimel, of Johnny’s Selected Seeds, said home gardening started gaining popularity several years ago but got a boost when fuel prices shot up and more people spent their holidays at home in what has been dubbed “staycations”. Now the price of oil has fallen, but the number of gardens keeps growing.

Johnny’s seed sales to home gardens are up 50 per cent this year and the company’s total sales – to home and commercial gardeners – are up 30 per cent, Ms Keimel said. “Food prices have been steadily climbing, and when you add on top of that the fuel crunch … it pinches people,” she said.

Most American gardeners – 58 per cent – say they grow their own vegetables because they want better-tasting food, according to the NGA survey, and 54 per cent say they want to save money on groceries. Charlie Nardozzi, the group’s senior horticulturalist, said households and neighbourhoods are also gardening to reduce their contribution to global warming and to be connected to their communities.

“It’s not just an economics-based trend,” Mr Nardozzi said. “I think it’s really something that’s a little bit deeper than that. There are a lot of other factors, too.”

Food safety is another factor for 48 per cent of gardening households, according to the NGA survey, and this is also something Ms Keimel says she has seen: “We’ve had three major scares of salmonella recently,” she said, referring to the produce-borne bacterium that can prove fatal. “The best way to make sure you’re getting safe food is to know what you’re growing.”
Mr Nardozzi noted that the average garden size is falling, as more people in cities and suburbs are growing in whatever space they have. About 57 per cent of US home and community gardens last year were 9.3 square metres or smaller, according to the survey.

Mr Burns, the lawyer, fits with this trend. He and his wife plan to grow tomatoes, string beans and courgettes behind their row house in downtown Washington, DC. “It’s going to be very small – just a little bit of soil around the patio,” Mr Burns, 33, said. “I like the idea of eating something that you’ve grown yourself, even if it’s on a small scale.”

Most gardening outlets are beginning to see a rise in the number of basic questions about planting, and they expect more questions as the season progresses. About 20 per cent of this year’s gardeners will be first-timers and nearly 60 per cent have gardened for less than five years. Organisations are preparing their online instructional videos and how-to pages.

Although Mrs Obama seems to be a part of the gardening craze more than its instigator, many of the hundreds of people who lined up last weekend to view the White House gardens hoped to glimpse the lawn’s newest addition – the vegetable plot the First Lady has been planting with a group of local elementary kids.

“I don’t know if you were paying attention, but the President and I … went on this long trip,” Mrs Obama told students earlier this month, referring to the presidential tour of Europe. “The number one question I got as the First Lady from world leaders – they were all excited about this garden. Every single person, from Prince Charles on down, they were excited about the fact that we were planting a garden.”

Sofia Hart, 33, a veteran gardener from Boston, heard the Obama garden was visible from outside the fences surrounding the southern lawn of the White House and was thrilled to discover that on the day of her visit last Saturday the grounds were open to the public for the semi-annual garden tour.

“It was a great surprise,” said Ms Hart, who has planted gardens while living in South America and Africa in addition to Boston. “I was thrilled to see the garden, even though it wasn’t as close as I had hoped.”

Already a supporter of the president, Ms Hart described the new vegetable garden as “just one more thing in a sequence of things that the Obamas are doing right”.

Not everyone is as pleased with the 100-square-metre Obama garden, which will use only organic fertilisers and insects like ladybirds and praying mantises to control populations of other harmful insects.

“As you go about planning and planting the White House garden, we respectfully encourage you to recognise the role conventional agriculture plays in the US,” Mid America CropLife Association, an industry group said in a letter to the White House that was posted on the blog La Vida Locavore.

“Conventional” agriculture allows for the use of chemical fertilisers. “America’s farmers understand crop protection technologies are supported by sound scientific research and innovation,” the letter continues.

The White House garden is still organic, though.

WASHINGTON // Jim Warlick, 56, could retire right now, thanks to Barack Obama, the US president-elect.

Mr Warlick sells political memorabilia – including buttons, coins and T-shirts – at Political Americana, his store in Washington, DC.

Since Mr Obama won the race for the White House on Nov 4, related merchandise has been snapped up so quickly that Mr Warlick opened a second shop last month. He is also planning to open another five temporary stores in the weeks surrounding Mr Obama’s inauguration on Jan 20, an event that could draw several million people.

Mr Warlick is not alone. Mr Obama’s image has boosted merchandise sales for producers, suppliers and even inspired mom-and-pop shops to enter the world of politics for the first time.

“I’ve been in the business 28 years and I’ve never seen anything like this,” Mr Warlick said.

While he has thought about an easy retirement in the tropical Virgin Islands funded by Obama-driven sales, he said he loves the work too much to quit now.

In fact, thanks to the next president’s popularity overseas, Mr Warlick is even considering opening another store in Germany. At his Washington stores, he estimates foreigners buy about 20 per cent of his Obama merchandise, compared to five or 10 per cent for other US politicians. Once popular George W Bush merchandise, commemorating the outgoing US president, was already out of style by the time Mr Obama proved himself a serious contender for the presidency and started driving up Political Americana sales in the fall of 2007.

“For a couple of years we’ve been selling more anti-Bush items than pro-Bush,” Mr Warlick said.

These days, people who buy pro-Bush buttons put them in their pocket, while people who buy anti-Bush buttons often pin them on their jacket right away, he said.

Mr Warlick has about 50,000 pro-Bush buttons in storage along with other leftover Bush merchandise.

“Maybe one day down the road collectors will buy it. Or maybe when he opens the Bush library we can sell it to them … or we may just give it to them.”

Political Americana has a tradition of predicting presidential elections based on button sales, and “Obama stuff has just been off the charts”, Mr Warlick said, noting that Obama merchandise outsold McCain memorabilia 10 to one.

“He’s already having a positive impact on the economy,” he said of Mr Obama. “We love that man.”

One of Mr Warlick’s suppliers, Tigereye Design in rural Greenville, Ohio, also got an early stimulus from the next US president. The company was contracted to make some official Obama campaign merchandise and also sold the branded items through its website, DemocraticStuff.com.

“Before we started working with the Obama campaign, we had 30 employees,” Justin Hemminger of Tigereye said. “At the peak during the election, we were up to just under 500 employees. The Obama merchandise put a lot of people to work in our part of Ohio.”

While the firm is now back down to about 50 employees, the sales continue. In the two months since the election, Tigereye has sold more than two million buttons. The company’s top-selling products, buttons, go for US$1 apiece or less if bought in quantity. Mr Hemminger noted an increase in customers buying thousands of Obama buttons at a time.

Unlike Political Americana, Tigereye is a partisan company that produces political goods for Democratic candidates only. In 2008, the company sold political goods in three categories: generic Democratic merchandise, anti-Bush merchandise and Obama items, which outsold the other two groups 20 to one, Mr Hemminger said. “Demand for [Obama goods] has been through the roof. It’s unlike any candidate we’ve ever seen before.”

The unprecedented popularity of Obama merchandise has created smaller scale economic boosts as well.

After nearly two decades in business, the February family’s corner store in the northern tip of Washington, DC, was having a tough time. Then Quacy February, 33, who runs the store with his Jamaican-American parents, began making his own Obama merchandise.

“The idea came into my head about a year and a half ago,” Mr February said. “It first started as a way of promoting Obama.”

Mr February bought a press and began printing Obama images and messages on T-shirts, scarves and hats. The 4th Street Market’s customers are primarily black, and most of the store’s other sales are consumables, but when Mr Obama beat Hillary Clinton last June to become the first African-American presidential candidate on a major ticket, the February family’s sales took off – thanks to the Obama goods.

Mr February does not expect the boom to last long after the inauguration. “We’ll just have to find something else,” he said. “You have to have a little diversity to be around for so many years.”

* The National