Our national forest lands are irreplaceable national treasures. And until now, they’ve been off-limits to carbon capture and storage.

But the U.S. Forest Service is proposing a new rule to allow carbon dioxide waste dumping in national forests and grasslands. And along with the carbon, the industrialization of our forests includes dangerous carbon dioxide pipelines, injection wells, and roads. Storing carbon capture under pristine forests would pose potentially deadly risks to people and wildlife.

Suddenly there’s a lot of interest in the idea of carbon capture and storage, thanks to way-too-generous federal subsidies. Fossil fuel companies are rushing headlong to declare themselves in the CCS business – not to clean up old carbon, but to legitimize all the carbon they plan to release under their business-as-usual plans.

The Forest Service has a long tradition of refusing to allow any kind of permanent use of taxpayer-owned forests for any private industry. However, CCS is forever – unless the pipeline transporting CCS blows up, as has happened. In short, CCS anywhere is a bad idea, and CCS under our national forests is a special kind of stupid.

We’ve drafted a public comment for you, but of course feel free to add in your own words to make it even more powerful.