Farmers, he said, have been among the first to notice it, in longer growing seasons.

“I can tell you the corn growers, particularly, understand they are growing corn in places they weren’t 10 years ago” because of a longer growing season, he said.

He said that while the cause of climate change may be “an open question in some people’s minds, you can’t argue that the polar ice caps are not melting. That is a fact. Clearly, there has been global climate change.”

“What we need to do is focus on the research and development of technologies that will get carbon out of coal usage,” Enyart continued. “Coal provides 40 percent of our (national) energy. Nobody is going to turn 40 percent of their lights off, no one is going to turn their computer off 40 percent of the time, I don’t care how environmentally conscious you are. What we have to do is the (research and development) to drive those technology costs down.”

POWER AND POLITICS

Much is at stake for Missouri, Illinois and other states that are heavily dependent upon coal’s production and the power derived from it.