Tomorrow the House Natural Resources Committee will be holding a markup on H.R. 2016, the National Landscape Conservation System Act. Naturally, our adjunct fellow R.J. Smith has something to say about that:

This bill would turn 27 million acres of the Bureau of Land Management’s public lands into a National Landscape Conservation System. Millions of acres of public lands would be removed from multiple-use purposes and placed in highly restrictive very limited use categories. And at a time of energy crisis, it is also a threat to national energy security and independence by permanently, statutoriliy locking up America’s largest deposit of EPA-compliant clean coal, the 9 billion tons of low-sulfur and low-ash Kaiparowitz coal.