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

The version of the video embedded in the story is a slightly longer edit.

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.