The family-run Opel car dealership here has closed after 80 years. After the local SinnLeffers department store shut down, the grocery store in the basement put beer and pasta displays in the store windows where the mannequins once stood. The unemployment rate is shooting up as industrial jobs vanish.

MARBURG, Germany: This fairy-tale town is stuck in the middle of a utopian struggle over renewable energy. The town council's decision to require solar-heating panels has thrown Marburg into a vehement debate over the boundaries of ecological good citizenship and led opponents to charge that their genteel town has turned into a "green dictatorship."