A Part of Utah Built on Coal Wonders What Comes NextPRICE, Utah — For generations, coal has been the lifeblood of this mineral-rich stretch of eastern Utah. Mining families proudly recall all the years they toiled underground. Supply companies line the town streets. Above the road that winds toward the mines, a soot-smudged miner peers out from a billboard with the slogan “Coal = Jobs.”But recently, fear has settled in. The state’s oldest coal-fired power plant, tucked among the canyons near town, is set to close, a result of new, stricter federal pollution regulations.As energy companies tack away from coal, toward cleaner, cheaper natural gas, people here have grown increasingly afraid that their community may soon slip away. Dozens of workers at the facility here, the Carbon Power Plant, have learned that they must retire early or seek other jobs. Local trucking and equipment outfits are preparing to take business elsewhere.“There are a lot of people worried,” said Kyle Davis, who has been employed at the plant since he was 18.Mr. Davis, 56, worked his way up from sweeping floors to managing operations at the plant, whose furnaces have been burning since 1954.“I would have liked to be here for another five years,” he said. “I’m too young to retire.”But Rocky Mountain Power, the utility that operates the plant, has determined that it would be too expensive to retrofit the aging plant to meet new federal standards on mercury emissions. The plant is scheduled to be shut by April 2015.“We had been working for the better part of three years, testing compliance strategies,” said David Eskelsen, a spokesman for the utility. “None of the ones we investigated really would produce the results that would meet the requirements.”For the last several years, coal plants have been shutting down across the country, driven by tougher environmental regulations, flattening electricity demand and a move by utilities toward natural gas.This month, the board of directors of the Tennessee Valley Authority, the country’s largest public power utility, voted to shut eight coal-powered plants in Alabama and Kentucky and partly replace them with gas-fired power. Since 2010, more than 150 coal plants have been closed or scheduled for retirement.The Environmental Protection Agency estimates that the stricter emissions regulations for the plants will result in billions of dollars in related health savings, and will have a sweeping impact on air quality.In recent weeks, the agency held 11 “listening sessions” around the country in advance of proposing additional rules for carbon dioxide emissions.“Co al plants are the single largest source of dangerous carbon pollution in the United States, and we have ready alternatives like wind and solar to replace them,” said Bruce Nilles,director of the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal campaign, which wants to shut all of the nation’s coal plants.“We have a choice,” he said, “which in most cases is cheaper and doesn’t have any of the pollution.”Coal’s downward turn has hit Appalachia hardest, but the effects of the transition toward other energy sources has started to ripple westward.Mr. Eskelsen said Rocky Mountain Power would place some of the 70 Carbon facility employees at its two other Utah coal plants. Other workers will take early retirement or look for different jobs.Still, the notion that this pocket of Utah, where Greek, Italian and Mexican immigrants came to mine coal more than a century ago, could survive without it, is hard for people here to comprehend.“The attack on coal is so broad-reaching in our little community,” said Casey Hopes, a Carbon County co mmissioner, whose grandfather was a coal miner. “The power plants, the mines —they support so many smaller businesses. We don’t have another industry.”Like others in Price, Mr. Hopes voiced frustration with the Obama administration, saying it should be investing more in clean coal technology rather than discarding coal altogether. Annual Utah coal production, though, has been slowly declining for a decade according to the federal Energy Information Administration.Last year, mines here produced about 17 million tons of coal, the lowest level since 1987, though production has crept up this year.“This is the worst we’ve seen it,” said David Palacios, who works for a trucking company that hauls coal to the power plants, and whose business will slow once the Carbon plant closes. Mr. Palacios, president of the Southeastern Utah Energy Producers Association, noted that the demand for coal has always ebbed and flowed here.“But this has been two to three years we’re struggling through,” he said.Compounding the problem, according to some mining experts, is that until now, most of the state’s coal has been sold and used within the region, rather than being exported overseas. That has left the industry here more vulnerable to local plant closings.Cindy Crane, chairwoman of the Utah Mining Association, said demand for Utah coal could eventually drop as much as 50 percent. “For most players in Utah coal, this a tough time,” said Ms. Crane, vice president of PacifiCorp, a Western utility and mining company that owns the Carbon plant.Mr. Nilles of the Sierra Club acknowledged that the shift from coal would not be easy on communities like Carbon County. But employees could be retrained or compensated for lost jobs, he said, and new industries could be drawn to the region.Washington State, for example, has worked with municipalities and utilities to ease the transition from coal plants while ensuring that workers are transferred to other energy jobs or paid, if nearing retirement, Mr. Nilles said.“Coal has been good to Utah,” Mr. Nilles said, “but markets for coal are drying up. You need to get ahead of this and make sure the jobs don’t all leave.”For many here, coal jobs are all they know. The industry united the area during hard times, too, especially during the dark days after nine men died in a 2007 mining accident some 35 miles down the highway. Virtually everyone around Price knew the men, six of whom remain entombed in the mountainside.But there is quiet acknowledgment that Carbon County will have to change — if not now, soon.David Palacios’s father, Pete, who worked in the mines for 43 years, has seen coal roar and fade here. Now 86, his eyes grew cloudy as he recalled his first mining job. He was 12, and earned $1 a day.“I’m retired, so I’ll be fine. But these young guys?” Pete Palacios said, his voice trailing off.NARSAQ, Greenland — As icebergs in the Kayak Harbor pop andhiss while melting away, this remote Arctic town and its culture are alsodisappearing in a changing climate.Narsaq’s largest employer, a shrimpfactory, closed a few years ago after the crustaceans fled north to coolerwater. Where once there were eight commercial fishing vessels, there is nowone.As a result, the population here,one of southern Greenland’s major towns, has been halved to 1,500 in just adecade. Suicides are up.“Fishing is the heart of this town,”said Hans Kaspersen, 63, a fisherman. “Lots of people have lost theirlivelihoods.”But even as warming temperatures areupending traditional Greenlandic life, they are also offering up intriguing newopportunities for this state of 57,000 — perhaps nowhere more so than here inNarsaq.Vast new deposits of minerals andgems are being discovered as Greenland’s massive ice cap recedes, forming thebasis of a potentially lucrative mining industry.One of the world’s largest depositsof rare earth metals —essential for manufacturing cellphones, wind turbinesand electric cars — sits just outside Narsaq.It has long been known thatGreenland sat upon vast mineral lodes, and the Danish government has mappedthem intermittently for decades. Niels Bohr, Denmark’s Nobel Prize-winningnuclear physicist and a member of the Manhattan Project, visited Narsaq in 1957because of its uranium deposits.But previous attempts at miningmostly failed, proving too expensive in the inclement conditions. Now, warminghas altered the equation.Greenland’s Bureau of Minerals andPetroleum, charged with managing the boom, currently has 150 active licensesfor mineral exploration, up from 20 a decade ago. Altogether, companies spent$100 million exploring Greenland’s deposits last year, and several are applyingfor licenses to begin construction on new mines, bearing gold, iron and zincand rare earths. There are also foreign companies exploring for offshore oil.The Black Angel lead and zinc mine,which closed in 1990, is applying to reopen this year, said Jorgen T.Hammeken-Holm, who oversees licensing at the country’s mining bureau, “becausethe ice is in retreat and you’re getting much more to explore.”The Greenlandic government hopesthat mining will provide new revenue. In granting Greenland home rule in 2009,Denmark froze its annual subsidy, which is scheduled to be decreased further inthe coming years.Here in Narsaq, a collection ofbrightly painted homes bordered by spectacular fjords, two foreign companiesare applying to the government for permission to mine.That proximity promises employment,and the company is already schooling some young men in drilling and in English,the international language of mine operations. It plans to build a processingplant, a new port and more roads. (Greenland currently has none outside ofsettledareas.) Narsaq’s tiny airport, previously threatened with closure fromlack of traffic, could be expanded. A local landlord is contemplatingconverting an abandoned apartment block into a hotel.“There will be a lot of peoplecoming from outside and that will be a big challenge since Greenlandic culturehas been isolated,” said Jasper Schroder, a student home in Narsaq fromuniversity in Denmark.Still, he supports the mine andhopes it will provide jobs and stem the rash of suicides, particularly amonghis peers; Greenland has one of the highest suicide rates in the world. “Peoplein this culture don’t want to be a burden to their families if they can’tcontribute,” he said.But not all are convinced of thebenefits of mining. “Of course the mine will help the local economy and willhelp Greenland, but I’m not so sure if it will be good for us,” said Dorotheaodg aard, who runs a local guesthouse. “We are worried about the loss ofnature.”It didn’t take long for Manuel García Murillo, a bricklayer who took over as mayor here last June, to realize that his town was in trouble. It was 800,000 euros, a little more than $1 million, in the red. There was no cash on hand to pay for anything — and there was work that needed to be done.But then an amazing thing happened, he said. Just as the health department was about to close down the day care center because it didn’t have a proper kitchen, Bernardo Benítez, a construction worker, offered to put up the walls and the tiles free. Then, Maria José Carmona, an adult education teacher, stepped in to clean the place up.And somehow, the volunteers just kept coming. Every Sunday now, the residents of this town in southwest Spain — young and old — do what needs to be done, whether it is cleaning the streets, raking the leaves, unclogging culverts or planting trees in the park.“It was an initiative from them,” said Mr. García. “Day to day we talked to people and we told them there was no money. Of course, they could see it. The grass in between the sidewalks was up to my thigh. “Higuera de la Serena is in many ways a microcosm of Spain’s troubles. Just as Spain’s national and regional governments are struggling with the collapse of the construction industry, overspending on huge capital projects and a pileup of unpaid bills, the same problems afflict many of its small towns.But what has brought Higuera de la Serena a measure of fame in Spain is that the residents have stepped up where their government has failed. Mr. García says his phone rings regularly from other town officials who want to know how to do the same thing. He is serving without pay, as are the town’s two other elected officials. They are also forgoing the cars and phones that usually come with the job.“We lived beyond our means,” Mr. García said. “We invested in public works that weren’t sensible. We are in technical bankruptcy.” Even some money from the European Union that was supposed to be used for routine operating expenses and last until 2013 has already been spent, he said.Higuera de la Serena, a cluster of about 900 houses surrounded by farmland, and traditionally dependent on pig farming and olives, got swept up in the giddy days of the construction boom. It built a cultural center and invested in a small nursing home. But the projects were plagued by delays and cost overruns.The cultural center still has no bathrooms. The nursing home, a whitewashed building sits on the edge of town, still unopened. Together, they account for some $470,000 of debt owed to the bank. But the rest of the debt is mostly the unpaid bills of a town that was not keeping up with its expenses. It owes for medical supplies, for diesel fuel, for road repair, for electrical work, for musicians who played during holidays.Higuera de la Serena is not completely without workers. It still has a half-time librarian, two half-time street cleaners, someone part-time for the sports complex, a secretary and an administrator, all of whom are paid through various financing streams apart from the town. But the town once had a work force twice the size. And when someone is ill, volunteers haveto step in or the gym and sports complex — open four hours a day — must close.For more than 30 years, I have been wondering about L.R. Generson.On one of our first Christmases together, my husband gave me a complete set of Dickens. There were 20 volumes, bound in gray cloth with black corners, old but in good condition. Stamped on the flyleaf of each volume, in faded block letters, was the name of the previous owner: "L.R. Generson, M.D., Bronx, NY."That Dickens set is one of the best presents anyone has ever given me. A couple of the books are still pristine, but others - “Bleak House,’’ “David Copperfield,’’ and especially “Great Expectations’’ - have been read and re-read almost to pieces. Over the years, the character kept me company. And so, , has L.R. Generson.，in his silent enigmatic way.Did he love the books as much as I do? Who was he? On a whim, I Googled him. There wasn’t much - a single mention on a veterans’ website of a World War II captain named Leonard Generson. But I did find a Dr. Richard Generson, an oral surgeon living in New Jersey. Since Generson is not a common name, I decided to write to him.Dr. Generson was kind enough to write back. He told me that his father, Leonard Richard Generson, was born in 1909. He lived in New York City but went to medical school in Basel, Switzerland. He spoke 10 languages fluently. As an obstetrician and gynecologist, he opened a practice in the Bronx shortly before World War II. His son described him as “an extremely patriotic individual’’; right after Pearl Harbor he closed his practice and enlisted. He served throughout the war as a general surgeon with an airborne special forces unit in Europe, where he became one of the war’s most highly decorated physicians.Leonard Generson’s son didn’t remember the Dickens set, though he told me that there were always a lot of novels in the house. His mother probably “cleaned house’’ after his father’s death in 1977 - the same year my husband bought the set in a used book store.I found this letter very moving, with its brief portrait of an intelligent, brave man and his life of service. At the same time, it made me question my presumption that somehow L.R. Generson and I were connected because we’d owned the same set of books. The letter both told me a little about him, and told me that I would never really know anything about him - and why should I? His son must have been startled to hear from a stranger on such a fragile pretext. What had I been thinking?One possible, and only somewhat facetious, answer is that I’ve read too much Dickens. In the world of a Dickens novel, everything is connected to everything else. Orphans find families. Lovers are joined (or parted and morally strengthened). Ancient mysteries are solved and old scores are settled. Questions are answered. Stories end.Leonard Generson’s life touched mine only lightly, th rough the coincidence of a set of books. But there are other lives he touched more deeply. The next time I read a Dickens novel, I will think of him and his military service and his 10 languages. And I will think of the hundreds of babies he must have delivered, who are now in the middle of their own lives and their own stories.格陵兰岛纳萨克——随着皮艇港(Kayak Harbor)的冰山在融化过程中发出嘶嘶的响声，这座偏远的北极小镇和它的文化，也正在随着气候变化而消失。