One of the short sighted and narrow minded arguments being bandied about by char activists currently is that politicians ought to buy the votes of farmers by promising subsidies for the use of char.

Farmers can be bought, as was done with ethanol subsidies, but it's an admission by char advocates that they think that char has little or no real value. If it did then it would not benefit from subsidy. The same was true for ethanol and as has become painfully obvious ethanol is a huge negative for the environment and governance.

There are two glaring defects with this sort of advocacy. One is that the threat of subsidy freezes investment. No one wants to jump the gun and take management action that might later be subsidized. They'll delay action so that they can collect rents for doing what they might have done anyway had there been no threat of subsidy.

The second defect is that there isn't enough money to do any good. Carbon is a global problem and almost all of the growth in emissions will be in developing societies that don't have that kind of money to squander or have any political motives to do so in any case.

All that subsidies in developed nations will do is to enrich some of those who are in the carbon business. It won't do much about emissions on a global scale. That's not what char is about. It's one of many agronomic hacks that can help with the daunting task of producing food and fiber for a growing world. It does have real value.

The only useful and legitimate role for government is to assist in funding some basic research. Good ideas that come from that can be applied by companies that think that they can make a business of it. An example discussed earlier is the company that will make ammonia fertilizer from the cobs and stover produced by Iowa farmers using a process that has a biochar residual. Both the ammonia and the char can be sold back to farmers for their agronomic value - no subsidies required. The real problems of ag waste management, fertilization and soil improvement are all addressed and would be just as valuable in a world not obsessed with climate related rent seeking.

This type of realism has also appeared recently in the thinking of some other geoengineering schemers. Klaus Lackner has been talking about the economic viability of the CO2 sequestering system he has developed - known as synthetic trees - that can compete with other commercial providers of CO2 to industry. His method can be profitable when there is not a nearby source of CO2 rich gas streams since the cost of transporting CO2 from such locations can be avoided. That's part of the argument for producing ammonia near the farms that produce the feedstocks and consume the ammonia too. It makes business sense.

There may be some other things that governments can do but they consist mostly of removing impediments that they have previously erected in mind dead attempts to achieve some nefarious purpose or another and which now prevent sensible practices by making them too costly and imposing delays. In general, as many have said for a long time, government is the problem not the solution. There are many instances where biochar would be made and used but it isn't permitted by authorities intent on eliminating burning and associated emissions or particulates. Get them out of the way. Cut their power and pay and send them home rather than giving them even greater power to meddle and pots of money to bribe constituents. No good ever comes of that.