A New Mexico Religious Pilgrimage Rode a Global Wave Hoping for Ripple Effects for the Environment – Inside Climate News

Oil and gas wells might seem unusual sites for religious pilgrims, but on January 12, three faith-motivated environmentalists set out on a 328-mile trek from Carlsbad, New Mexico, that would see them slogging on foot past fossil-fuel developments, through remote ranch lands and deep into the desert on their way to the state capitol in Santa Fe.

The trio, representing New Mexico Interfaith Power & Light (NM-IPL) sought to use their 25-day journey to connect with communities and advocate for the passage of the Clear Horizons Act (SB18), a bill that would have required a 45 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions below 2005 levels by 2030 and net-zero emissions by 2050. The group is one of three dozen organizations that are part of the Clear Horizons New Mexico coalition.

Though they were unsuccessful in helping to bring SB18 over the finish line—it was ultimately defeated in the Senate on February 11, with several Democrats joining Republicans to kill it—the Rev. Clara Sims, NM-IPL’s assistant executive director, said the pilgrimage was about more than a single outcome.

“Taking an act of faith like this and even just being people of faith in general means that we believe in the power of things that aren’t totally measurable to have these currents or ripple effects that might—even years or decades down the line—plant a seed in someone else to have the courage to take an action,” said Sims, the associate minister for First Congressional United Church of Christ Albuquerque.

A Toxic Legacy

During the first days of their journey, the group passed through southeastern New Mexico’s Permian Basin, the highest-producing oil field in the United States. In Carlsbad, a town of about 30,000 that is highly dependent on the oil and gas industry, they spoke with a man who had retired from this sector after more than 40 years.

“He is grateful for his pension, but also has friends whose health have been impacted by the toxic chemicals that go along with the industry,” NM-IPL said in their blog. “He particularly emphasized the dangers of hydrogen sulfide, which accompanies the flaring of gas.”

Prolonged or repeated exposure to hydrogen sulfide has been tied to weight loss, chronic cough and low blood pressure, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The agency added that some evidence suggests that exposure may increase the risk of miscarriage. Another study tied chronic exposure to hydrogen sulfide in natural gas processing plants to a rare and potentially life-threatening blood disorder called methemoglobinemia and another rare but generally non-lethal blood condition called sulfhemoglobinemia.

Acute exposure to the gas can also lead to skin and eye irritation, which NM-IPL’s executive director Desirée Bernard suspects she experienced while walking through New Mexico’s oil and gas country.

“I started to get a stinging sensation in my eyes,” she said. “I think it was from exposure to the air.”

The burning of oil and gas is also a major contributor to climate change, and New Mexico is at particular risk for increased drought and dangerous heat waves as global temperatures continue to rise. The state is already grappling with a historic megadrought that has depleted major waterways, including the Rio Grande. 

“A Way of Generating Goodness”

Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists and the faithful of other religions have been going on pilgrimages for centuries.

“It’s an old-school thing that humans do and I can see why. It has a way of generating goodness in the world,” said Bernard, who is married to a Christian minister and was born into a Catholic family but described her own faith as a “meandering spiritual path.”

One recent example is the group of Buddhist monks who grabbed headlines as they completed a 2,300-mile Walk for Peace to Washington D.C. on February 10. NM-IPL’s marketing and communications representative Jim Ekstrand, who is based in Santa Fe and part of the United Church of Santa Fe, called this more-than-100-day pilgrimage “incredibly inspiring.” 

Religious groups have also in recent years used pilgrimages as a way to show support for environmental causes. In November 2025, the Diocese of San Diego Creation Care Ministry held a two-day, 27-mile pilgrimage with 50 walkers to the Salton Sea, a landlocked body of water in Southern California that has declined in recent years. Similar to NM-IPL’s pilgrimage, the event featured prayers and reflection on environmental challenges facing the region, including the pesticides from the Imperial Valley’s agricultural sector that have long run off into the Salton Sea. 

“With the increasing heat and drought climate change is bringing, it’s evaporating all that toxicity into the atmosphere,” said Christina Bagaglio Slentz, associate director in the Office of Life Peace and Justice for the Diocese of San Diego. “So it’s affecting the people that live in the region.”

The Catholic Diocese of San Bernardino, which covers the area to the north, also organized a similar pilgrimage with about 50 participants, and the two groups—one moving north and another moving south—met up in a small community along the route.

These pilgrimages were inspired by the 2025 Jubilee and Catholic Pilgrims of Hope for Creation, an initiative that focused on the intersection of faith and environmental stewardship and celebrated the 10th anniversary of Laudato Si’, Pope Francis’ second encyclical, subtitled “On care for our common home,” and the 800th anniversary of St. Francis of Assisi’s Canticle of the Creatures. In all, more than 230 such pilgrimages took place across the country that fall.

“It was pretty amazing,” Bagaglio Slentz said of her group’s journey to the Salton Sea. “I think our youngest participant was 7 and our oldest was like 86. So it was people of various ages and walks of life.”

Several environmental pilgrimages also occurred in September 2025 in the U.K., including the Three-Ports Pilgrimage in Bristol, which included a train ride to the nearby town of Portishead, 6-mile walk and bus ride back to Bristol. 

“We stopped six times to pray and sing, focusing on different forms of transport and how they impact people and the environment,” the group said in a blog post. “We also got to know one another better, and heard lots of inspiring stories about different actions some of us had taken part in.”

Almost all religions teach respect for the environment, from Buddhism, which views nature as a living system essential to human existence, to Christianity, where humans are to act as stewards of the Earth. 

Pope Francis highlighted climate issues to the more than 1.2 billion Catholics worldwide throughout his papacy, most notably with Laudato si’.

“A very solid scientific consensus indicates that we are presently witnessing a disturbing warming of the climatic system…” he said in the 2015 papal letter. “Humanity is called to recognize the need for changes of lifestyle, production and consumption, in order to combat this warming or at least the human causes which produce or aggravate it.”

Meanwhile, environmental coalitions are increasingly including faith-based groups into their campaigns. According to Sims, this is a win for these movements, as religious communities can offer unique perspectives.

“I think that people of faith and sort of spiritual grounding have a particular way in which they can sometimes bring a greater depth to some of these conversations in terms of really stepping back and maybe asking the bigger, deeper questions,” she said. For instance, “‘What are the moral implications of what is happening?’”

Praying for Change

“Moisture.” 

That was one rancher’s speedy reply after Bernard explained the New Mexico pilgrimage in support of the Clear Horizons Act and asked him what his prayer might be. She’d met him while walking along a dirt road through a rural area near Corona, a small village about 90 miles southeast of Albuquerque.

Over the last decade, drought has made it difficult to work his land, he told Bernard. On that day, the rancher, driving a big white truck and outfitted in a sturdy jacket and black cowboy hat, was hauling supplemental feed. He told Bernard that foraging is tough for the herd when the land is so parched.

He’s not the only New Mexican hoping for a wetter future, Bernard added.

“[Water concerns] also showed up a lot in the written prayers that we received from people,” she said. During their journey, the group carried pages with about 50 such prayers that had been sent to them.

They gave copies of those prayers to their “climate champions,” such as the SB18’s primary sponsor, Mimi Stewart (D-Albuquerque), other co-sponsors of the bill and legislators who they saw as possible “swing votes” on the Clear Horizons Act, as well as to other members of the Clear Horizons New Mexico Coalition.

Prayer was integral to the pilgrimage. One day, for instance, the group was joined by Joyce Skeet, who shared that she was compelled to pray for forgiveness for the harms that humanity has done to the Earth. The pilgrims adopted that topic for their devotions as they started their trek northward from Corona that morning.

“It was very meaningful to share in that as we walked,” said Bernard. “To share in that sense of the confessional aspect of our complicity in the harm of the world.”

As they trekked in the Corona area, they also passed by a massive wind farm, part of the SunZia Wind and Transmission Project, which will put out 3.5 gigawatts and power more than 3 million homes—primarily for California and Arizona—and be the largest renewable energy project in the Western Hemisphere when it goes online. With hundreds of wind turbines across the landscape, Ekstrand described this area as feeling like a sharp contrast to the Permian Basin.

Along the way, they also benefitted from the hospitality of local communities, sleeping in churches and with families. Other times, they camped or stayed in hotels. Early on, they shared a meal with a family who immigrated from the Oaxaca area of Mexico. And as they neared the end of their journey in late January, Rabbi Nahum Ward-Lev and Shelley Mann-Lev of Santa Fe hosted them at a “pop-up, sit down Shabbat dinner” in a Quality Inn in the small town of Moriarty. They then joined Father Michael Coburn at the Church of Holy Cross in nearby Edgewood for another Shabbat circle. 

The walk wasn’t without its struggles. Ekstrand’s wife fell ill with pneumonia early on, ending up in the hospital.

“So I had to leave on the second day to be with her,” he said. “She’s recovering very well now, thankfully. And then I was able to rejoin for the last several days.”

Sims endured physical pain during the walk, particularly in her back, but says being outside and breathing the fresh air was cathartic.

“I got to a place where I was like, ‘Wait, did I just heal my body with all the pain? Now my back feels better’” she said. “I don’t know, I just started to feel good.”

Ekstrand seconded the idea that the trek, though at times difficult, was replenishing. 

“The days I did it, even though the miles were long, for me, it felt surprisingly refreshing in a way to break the daily routine and get out on the road and do those long walks,” he said. “So physically, it didn’t feel tremendously demanding.”

The final leg of their journey was a short walk from a Santa Fe trailhead to a local church followed by a march to the Roundhouse—New Mexico’s State Capital—for Climate Solutions Day on Feb. 5. The Sierra Club-sponsored event included various environmental organizations meeting with legislators, training to lobby, attending committee hearings and coming together for a noon rally. 

“There was a really heartening crowd as we were coming into Santa Fe,” Bernard said. “…I think it was between 70 or 80 at that last location at the little church before we went on to the Roundhouse.”

Though she was enthusiastic about the trek and echoed Sims’ belief in its potential to create ripple effects rather than specific outcomes, Bernard still expressed disappointment in the failure of the Clear Horizons Act.

“There are consistently folks who should know better who are just voting with oil and gas,” she said. “And it’s depressing, really. We need to replace those people because at this point, we don’t actually have the luxury of having state leadership that is not going to rise to the occasion with what we’re doing to our planet.”