The idea of regulating behavior, either with blue laws or taxes, just seems dumb. Looking at the activity from a broader perspective often reveals opportunities for increased benefits. When you are concerned about a negative consequence of a behavior, look for those opportunities rather than reaching for the hammer to force behavior change. You'll get willing cooperation rather than surly resistance.

The coal in the ground in Illinois alone has more energy than all the oil in Saudi Arabia. The technology to turn that coal into fuel for cars, homes and factories is proven. And at current prices, that process could be at the vanguard of a big, new industry. . .

But there is a big catch. Producing fuels from coal generates far more carbon dioxide, which contributes to global warming, than producing vehicle fuel from oil or using ordinary natural gas. And the projects now moving forward have no incentive to capture carbon dioxide beyond the limited amount that they can sell for industrial use. . .

Carbon is released in converting coal into an energy-rich gas made up of carbon monoxide and hydrogen, and then converting the gas into something more useful. Rentech wants to turn it into liquid fuel. GreatPoint wants to rearrange the molecules into natural gas.

But coal is cheap and the energy possibilities are endless. For example, at the Rentech plant, a substation on the east side of the plant that currently pulls in electricity will send it out instead. And, uniquely in this country, the plant will take coal and produce diesel fuel, which sells for more than $100 a barrel. . .

"The goal is fuels, but to get the plant up and running, fertilizer is a good backstop." And it is all local. The coal will come from southern Illinois, by barge or rail. The diesel can go straight to terminals or truckstops in the area, said Mr. Diesch, the plant manager, and the fertilizer to local farms. An odd advantage is that today, most coal-burning power plants in the area use coal hauled from Wyoming, because its sulfur content is lower; burning high-sulfur coal encourages acid rain. But if the coal is gasified, rather than burned, filtering out the sulfur is relatively easy, and the sulfur changes from a pollutant to a salable product. . .

GreatPoint has a different plan: move the plant where it can sell the carbon.

Andrew Perlman, the company's chief executive, thinks it has value. "Not only is it capturable, one of biggest advantages of the system is, we can locate our plant near a natural gas pipeline, in places where we can sell that carbon dioxide for a profit, using existing technology," he said. Oil producers inject carbon dioxide into old oil fields, to force oil to the surface.

Sulfur is a useful agricultural soil amendment and is used to covert low grade phosphate rock into high grade phosphoric acid useful as a plant nutrient, yielding energy in the process. Carbon dioxide has a number of industrial uses but injection into nearby oil fields is a high volume, high benefit use.

What some call wastes or pollutants and have a knee-jerk impulse to tax and regulate are better seen as valuable byproducts. If do-gooders and/or government prigs truly want to help society improve then it would be far more helpful if they investigated ways to get ever more benefits from byproducts and coproducts rather than seeking to punish the producers of these products. Helping such producers realize benefits they currently miss improves the industry, and so society. Sometimes help, such as financing or information from sponsored research, is all that is required to get these extra benefits. Over time the improvements would happen anyway without pressure or assistance, but the time can sometimes be reduced.