The American Spectator

Becky Norton Dunlop, vice president of external relations at the Heritage Foundation, who also served as a senior official in the Departments of Justice and Interior during the Reagan administration, spoke yesterday about something she said “controls almost everything we do in life.”

“Principles of a Conservative Environmental Vision: The American Conservation Ethic” was the subject of Dunlop’s talk, given to the Conservative Women’s Network. Dunlop paired the topic of the environment with freedom, a theme synonymous with the conservative cause.

Freedom in the United States of America, Dunlop said, is the “freedom to do good,” and not license to live in a way that negatively affects society.

Bearing this attitude in mind, Dunlop expounded on the Heritage Foundation’s “Eight Principles of the American Conservation Ethic,” codes with which Dunlop, the former secretary of natural resources for the state of Virginia, is well-acquainted:

“People are the most important, unique, and precious resource.

Renewable natural resources are resilient and dynamic and respond positively to wise management.

Private property protections and free markets provide the most promising new opportunities for environmental improvements.

Efforts to reduce, control, and remediate pollution should achieve real environmental benefits.

As we accumulate scientific, technological, and artistic knowledge, we learn how to get more from less.

Management of natural resources should be conducted on a site-and-situation specific basis.

Science should be employed as one tool to guide public policy.

The most successful environmental policies emanate from liberty.”

Here’s hoping the principles of the Heritage Foundation and like-minded individuals triumph over the Obama administration’s crippling regulatory mandates which threaten nearly every aspect of everyday life.