U.S. Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke had a message of peace for center-right attendees of the Western Conservative Summit this weekend.

“The war on American energy is over,” Zinke said.

He gave a solid defense of domestic energy production as a form of social and environmental justice, during a conference themed “making goodness fashionable.” The summit, Friday through Sunday, is the largest annual gathering of conservatives outside Washington, D.C.

A retired Navy SEAL commander, Zinke knows how dependence on foreign energy kills men, women and children around the globe.

“I’ve fought in a lot of countries, and I never want to see our children have to go to war – over resources we have here,” said Zinke, a geologist, eliciting standing applause.

Because of fracking, Zinke said, “we don’t have to be held hostage by our foreign enemies.”

When Americans depend on overseas energy, they demand and fund oil and gas production by countries that lack modern environmental protection standards.

Greenhouse emissions, like other forms of environmental harm, do not stay within political boundaries of foreign countries. To protect the planet, environmentalists must think beyond their backyards in assessing the full ramifications of energy policies. Nearly anything that promotes foreign oil undermines the ability of Americans to protect the planet.

Zinke wants more energy production on public lands and shores, which was dramatically curtailed under policies of former President Barack Obama. A return of carefully regulated public lands production, he argued, would improve national parks and other land assets.

He makes a good case, saying the federal government has fallen behind about $11.5 billion in its most basic obligations of national parks maintenance. The government is behind an additional $15 billion in basic maintenance of other public lands and wildlife refuges.

After the Obama administration forbade drilling on 94 percent of the country’s shores, and greatly restricted energy production on public lands, the federal government lost nearly $16 billion in revenues from drilling permits.

No one could honestly dispute that Americans take more environmental care than most other oil-rich nations in harvesting and refining oil and gas. It is equally difficult to dispute how foreign oil wars kill Americans and their adversaries.

Former U.S. Rep. Bob Beauprez paralleled Zinke’s line of reasoning. He detailed how much land and wildlife stewardship is provided by farmers and ranchers, whom left-wing environmental activists so often target. He said farmers and ranchers are natural environmental stewards because their livelihoods depend on sustaining land, water and other gifts of the environment.

“If you listen to the mainstream media you’d never know, but conservatives have led the way for some of the most significant conservation efforts in the United States,” Beauprez said, crediting President Teddy Roosevelt with expansion of the national park system and President Ronald Reagan with reducing the ozone hole. “The extreme left says conservatives don’t value the environment and seek to destroy it, and the left has been successful in promoting that lie.”

Charlie Kirk, the 23-year-old founder of Turning Point USA, said academic and media establishments are at war with conservatives and misrepresenting their principles.

“It is more than entirely possible to attend one of the universities and not hear one good thing about conservative ideals for more than 10 minutes in four years,” Kirk said.

Conservative policies are often seen as good for business but bad for the environment and lacking in compassion. It is mostly a bad rap.

Without businesses and the wealth they generate, we would have no means of sustaining public lands. We would have no serious environmental regulations. We would have no charity. Prosperity pays for stewardship and compassion.

Neither the right nor the left, Republicans nor Democrats, has a monopoly on goodness. Our country benefits from a political spectrum that spans from far right to far left under constitutional protection of the free exchange of ideas.

We need those on the right, the left and all points between to respectfully fight for liberty and justice and all that makes this country special. The left should listen to the right, and the right should listen to the left.

To make “goodness fashionable,” conservatives and others should take pointers from this year’s Western Conservative Summit. We should each talk less about our team and more about using freedom and prosperity to promote social and environmental outcomes that benefit us all.

Do it, for goodness sake.