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By Freda Ross
March 14, 2025
Forty religious leaders from different denominations gathered in Texas this week to call for an end to fossil-fuel subsidies and expansion of related infrastructure.The meeting occurred just days before the Environmental Protection Agency announced it is rolling back landmark environmental regulations.
Aly Tharp, Gulf South organizer for GreenFaith USA, said the faith community has a moral obligation to oppose the cuts and organize against the changes.
“So, when we listen to the science and when we listen to Scripture, to moral lessons from all faith traditions,’ she said, “it’s a clear call that we’re on a path that’s mutually assured destruction. And we must change and start investing in our common survival. “
The religious leaders took part in public demonstrations outside the annual oil and gas industry CERAWeek conference in Houston. They also drafted a letter to the Trump Administration calling for subsidy money to be redirected to improve the environment.
Faith leaders toured communities near fossil-fuel facilities in the Houston area. Ilka Vega, executive for economic and environmental justice for United Women in Faith, said the neighborhoods are predominantly made up of low-income people of color.
“Seeing through their eyes what used to be their post office, their houses, their schools and everything that was taken away from them,” she said. “Places where they would go fishing and where they would go swimming and have fun, that were contaminated.”
The head of the EPA has said he and President Donald Trump support rewriting the agency’s 2009 finding that planet-warming greenhouse gases endanger public health and welfare.
Religious leaders and people of diverse faiths are being invited to sign the letter to the Trump administration on the GreenFaith USA website.