New Mexico Deserves a Future Beyond Fossil Fuels

In New Mexico, the frontlines of the climate crisis are not just environmental — they are geopolitical.

The oil extracted here doesn’t stay here. It moves through pipelines, ports and trade routes — circulating through global markets and shaping conflict, instability and the terms of international power. Extraction at home and wars abroad are part of the same system.

As the world’s first-ever global diplomatic conference on phasing out fossil fuels gets underway in Santa Marta, Colombia, that connection is impossible to ignore.

While much of the Global South is stepping forward to confront fossil fuel dependence, the United States remains the world’s largest oil and gas producer, extracting roughly 13.6 million barrels of crude oil per day in 2025 — with nearly half of that growth driven by the Permian Basin that stretches across southeastern New Mexico and west Texas.

As New Mexicans, this is impossible to overlook. The same political leadership in New Mexico that claims climate leadership is also the one expanding extraction, fast-tracking infrastructure, and protecting corporate interests at all costs.

The Trump administration’s attacks on Iran and Venezuela cannot be understood outside of this context — control over oil continues to shape interventions, sanctions and war. The question is not whether energy influences geopolitics, but rather whose interests that system is designed to serve.

And in New Mexico, the costs of that system are visible on the ground.

The Permian Basin has become the engine of U.S. oil production, responsible for roughly 6.3 million barrels per day. Entire communities are being reorganized around extraction as the industry pushes against ecological limits and infrastructure strain.

Living in the Permian Basin means facing pollution on an unprecedented scale.

My friend Jozee Zuñiga is a frontline resident in the Permian Basin whose family has nine natural gas pipelines running through their property — their home is surrounded by flares and drilling sites. Families like these live under constant assault from bad smells and poor air quality.

In parts of the Permian and neighboring Delaware basin, the ground has begun to shake from frequent earthquakes caused by oil and gas operations. Many people in these areas are dealing with health issues that can be linked to pollution, and exposure to chemicals known to cause cancer is common.

At the same time, natural gas generating stations are being expanded to power AI-driven data centers. Private equity firms like Blackstone are moving to control electric utilities, turning essential infrastructure into profit-generating assets. Uranium mining is being revived, threatening Indigenous communities with yet another cycle of nuclear colonization.

All of this is tied together by a coordinated strategy: sacrifice land, water, labor, and public health — often in Nuevo Mexicano, Indigenous and working-class communities — to sustain a system of endless growth and geopolitical dominance.

But it doesn’t have to be that way.

That’s why I’m traveling to Colombia to help represent New Mexico at the Santa Marta conference. The gathering, sponsored by the governments of Colombia and the Netherlands, offers a glimpse of what could happen when governments are willing to name fossil fuels as the root of the crisis.

This is no longer just about emissions targets or policy. It is about whether the systems shaping the future will continue to prioritize profit, extraction and militarization — or if our future will be transformed to center collective care, justice and survival.

That future will not be handed down through diplomatic language alone. It will have to be fought for — by frontline communities, by workers, by Indigenous nations asserting sovereignty over their lands and by movements refusing to accept business as usual.

In New Mexico and beyond, this fight is already underway in the demand for energy democracy — that is, taking control of energy away from corporations and placing it in the hands of our communities. It’s a call to shift power away from private equity and extractive industries and toward public, cooperative and community-owned models. And to treat communities who’ve been treated as sacrifice zones as leaders in building the solutions.

New Mexico sits at the center. What happens in the Permian Basin is not just a local issue. It is global. Santa Marta offers another path forward — and is a test of whether the world is finally willing to act accordingly.