Health care reform may be generating the headlines now, but over the next several weeks another issue just as important to the long-term future of the country will take center stage. The Senate will soon start debating a bill tackling climate change.

As we saw over the summer and are seeing now, the debate inside and outside the halls of Congress has, in large part, shifted from science to economics. The question now is how will legislation to reduce global warming impact Missouri’s businesses and farmers?

The clean energy bill passed by the House and a similar one introduced in the Senate would encourage investment in innovative clean technology and create jobs for Americans to build the wind farms, solar panels, hybrid cars and other energy-saving technology of the future. Numerous studies have found that producing power from renewable energy technologies creates more jobs kilowatt-hour for kilowatt-hour than fossil fuels.

To help with the transition, the House bill would provide funding to protect energy-intensive industries that compete internationally, such as the iron, steel, cement, paper, pulp and chemical industries. Plus, the legislation would provide a significant amount of funding to help the coal industry adopt technology enabling it to store its carbon emissions underground. The Senate bill is expected to follow suit.

Missouri is in a great position to take advantage of the growing renewable energy economy. The state already has a skilled industrial work force and a good transportation system in place to ship products. It also has easy access to steel and raw materials needed for manufacturing.

Consider the wind industry. Long thought a state without much wind power potential, Missouri made a major leap forward this year. During the second quarter of 2009, the Show-Me State nearly doubled its wind power capacity.

With its strong farming base, the state also has great potential to shrink its carbon footprint by burning biomass products, such as agricultural residues and switchgrass, with coal to generate electricity in Missouri’s existing coal power plants. Missouri’s farmers likewise stand to benefit by selling greenhouse gas “offsets” to polluters that have trouble reducing their own emissions.

Some farmers and rural landowners already are earning extra income by leasing their land for wind turbine installations. A national renewable electricity standard could help expand these efforts. Communities often use the tax revenue from wind farms for their public schools. In King City, over the last several years, new turbines generated $1 million for the school district. The infusion of new money into the city also helped to fuel a growth in local businesses.

Meanwhile, what would happen to Missouri if we did nothing to curb global warming?

Scientific studies point to a future of weather extremes, from longer-lasting heat waves to increasingly powerful storms and flooding. The state also likely would experience frequent, destructive Missouri River floods during one season and extended droughts that lower water levels and impair barge traffic during another. Wetter springs could delay crop planting. Hot, dry summers would stress crops and dairy cows, reducing yields.

If we continue business as usual, by the end of the century Missouri likely would experience 60 to 90 days every summer when temperatures soar above 100 degrees, according to “Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States,” a recent climate change report by 13 federal agencies.

The good news is that the cost of taking preventive action would be dramatically less than the cost of doing nothing. Studies by the Energy Information Administration and the Environmental Protection Agency estimate that the House bill would cost U.S. households less than the price of a postage stamp per day.

We are clearly at a crossroads. Do we continue to avoid addressing the very real threat of global warming and its potentially devastating environmental and economic consequences, or do we finally move forward to a cleaner, safer future?

Kevin Knobloch is president of the Union of Concerned Scientists in Cambridge, Mass. John McKinnon is a cattleman and wind turbine expert from King City, Mo.