WINDOW ROCK - A green controversy fueled by coal-fired power plants is raging on America's largest Indian reservation.

On one side is Joe Shirley Jr., president of the Navajo Nation, who rejects the notion of climate change even though he recently won an international award for environmentalism. On the other are environmentalists opposed to power plants in Indian Country and to the coal mines that provide their fuel. Caught in the middle are tribal members concerned with economic survival and the protection of sacred lands.

The dispute centers on fundamental questions of religion and heritage, as well as tribal finances.

The Navajo Generating Station near Page, which uses coal from mines on Black Mesa, employs hundreds of tribal members and helps finance the tribal government. The Desert Rock Energy Project, proposed in western New Mexico, has been under consideration for years. The $3 billion plant would be fueled by coal from a new mine, bringing more jobs and revenue to the Navajos.

The Environmental Protection Agency wants the Navajo Generating Station to install costly air-scrubbing equipment, an expense the tribe and some Arizona utility companies say could lead to the plant's closure. Environmental groups, which have targeted the plant for years because of the emissions-related haze that builds up over the Grand Canyon, applaud the scrubbers.

Andy Bessler, Sierra Club regional representative in the Southwest, said coal-fired power plants account for about 30 to 40 percent of carbon emissions worldwide. The Navajo Generating Station, the nation's third-largest emitter of nitrogen oxides, spews 19.9 million tons of carbon emissions each year and uses 9.1 billion gallons of water - enough to fill Saguaro Lake twice with water left over. The nearby Four Corners Power Plant is the second-largest emitter of nitrogen oxides.

"If we want to take care of global warming, coal power plants are the low-hanging fruit," Bessler said. "We can't just continue with business as usual if we want to protect the planet."

But Shirley, who last week was suspended by the tribal council amid an unrelated Navajo power struggle, challenges the very theory of worldwide climate change.

"There's no signs that have told me it's a problem," he said. "There's a lot of people running around out there saying, 'The sky is going to fall down. It's going to be the end of the world.' I don't believe that. I don't know what global warming is about. . . . Maybe I'm blind, I don't know. Maybe I don't have the intelligence. But where are the signs?"

Shirley, whose father-in-law is a medicine man, acknowledged that some Navajo traditionalists recognize climate change as a threat and have joined tribal conservation groups such as Diné CARE in claiming he sold out Native heritage to big business. Those critics, he said, have been sucked in by environmentalist propaganda.

Last month, Shirley criticized the Sierra Club, Grand Canyon Trust and other green organizations for interfering with Navajo sovereignty and caring more about insects or fish than the lives of Native Americans. The rebuke was especially stunning from the leader of a tribe that has for years aligned itself with green groups in political causes.

Six months ago, Shirley accepted the Nuclear-Free Future Award in Norway for collaborating with environmental groups to fight uranium mines near the Grand Canyon. Shirley, a Christian, said he consulted with Navajo traditionalists before deciding that carbon-spewing power plants and open-pit coal mines do not damage the Earth.

But Tony Skrelunas, a Navajo who works as Native American program coordinator for the Grand Canyon Trust, expressed dismay that Shirley spoke of resources without emphasizing stewardship.

"Even sheep herders learn to protect land from overgrazing," he said, "and to do the right thing so rains will come. . . . The thing that I find shocking is that, as Navajos, we are taught that there are different monsters in creation that try to destroy us. I think one of those that is really rising up is climate change."

More than 1,500 United Nations climate scientists agree that Earth's temperature has begun to rise at a potentially disastrous rate, and that carbon emissions are the major cause. Skrelunas noted a study issued this spring by Jayne Belnap, a scientist with the U.S. Geological Survey, which says global warming is expected to increase temperatures in the Four Corners area 10 degrees by 2100. Already, Belnap reports, drought has tripled the number of dust storms swirling from the high desert into the Colorado Rockies.

"I grew up on Big Mountain. We raised sheep," said Skrelunas. "It's massively different now. . . . Not as green. It doesn't rain anymore. There are lots of dust storms."

The Navajo reservation sprawls over portions of Arizona, New Mexico and Utah, with an estimated population over 250,000.

Anna Frazier, coordinator for Diné CARE, said the mines and electric plants have wrecked the land, sucked springs dry and polluted skies. She said Shirley ignores those facts, trading heritage for short-term cash.

"He's ignoring the fundamental laws of the Navajo people," Frazier said. "Our traditions tell us we have to protect and preserve all living things."

Shirley said his priority is to help the Navajo people, who suffer from an unemployment rate over 50 percent, with average annual incomes under $15,000.

Environmentalists have exacerbated the financial woes, he added, forcing the closure of a tribal sawmill and helping to shut down another power plant - the Mohave Generating Station near Laughlin, Nev. - that received coal from Black Mesa.

"They came onto our land," Shirley said. "They didn't tell me, 'Here, Mr. President. Here are other green jobs.' They just shut us down, put more people into impoverishment. You want me to accept that?

"I'm working on independence, period," he said. "If it takes green jobs to get us back to standing on our own two feet, I'm for green jobs. If it takes Desert Rock or Navajo Generating Station . . . I'm for Desert Rock and Navajo Generating Station."