[ajmurmann]

This is so terrifying. Fixing environment that was destroyed takes a very long time. Public land and parks that were given to companies can probably never be taken back. Not to talk about mountains that were mined. All this might be gone forever for some silly, antiquated mining or similar.

[ryanx435]

Lol. By your logic, we should revert all farmland west of the Appalachians back to native prairie because it used to be public land before people moved there.

[abootstrapper]

No, OP's logic is that we can't revert farmland west of the Appalachians back to native prairie because it's practically impossible to "undevelop" land back to its natural state. Thus we should focus on protecting currently undeveloped land.