The Interior Department today held their first “listening session” on the future of coal — in Washington, of course, so the national environmental groups could have their say before real Americans get a chance.

To sum up the two hours of nonsensical testimony from the Sierra Club and about a dozen of their interns, along with Greenpeace, Wilderness Society, and several others with like-sounding names: Coal companies should pay their fair share of royalties because coal is dirty so keep it in the ground.

Our buddies from WildEarth Guardians tweeted about the event and issued a statement making it appear to their supporters they were there representing their interests as well. But we don’t think they were because they didn’t bother to speak.

To sum up their statement that never actually made it into the record “ … coal needs to be kept in the ground.”

The closest Interior Secretary Sally Jewell’s listening tour will come to the Colowyo mine is August 18 at the Marriott Denver West.

The purpose of the tour is to determine how high taxes should be raised on the coal industry before the Obama administration shuts it down completely, but we’re just paraphrasing here.

We anticipate that every out-of-state environmental group will show up in Denver to make sure their screeching cries are heard by the administration. But we also expect that real people whose real lives are actually affected by these policies will make an even stronger showing with actual facts and substance to back up their arguments.