Latin America remains one of the most Christian regions on earth. More than 620 million people in Latin America identified as Christian in 2025.
For decades, ordinary families across South America battled volatile economies, hyperinflation, and brutal drug wars. You have likely watched these nations struggle to secure basic needs while their governments chased conflicting priorities. Cartel violence in places like Colombia and staggering debt crises in Argentina created cycles of deep despair.
Now, these communities are finally witnessing their countries embrace booming oil and gas economic growth. Open minds and proactive policies rooted in energy realism are driving this change. They are rejecting the anti-development models previously imposed by wealthy Western nations and choosing a path of genuine flourishing.
Oil and Gas = Economic Growth and Prosperity
When nations utilize their natural resources, human flourishing always follows. You can see the direct results in the economic data. Poverty in Latin America fell to historic lows near 25 percent by 2025, down from 30 percent just three years earlier amid post-pandemic recovery.
What is fueling this massive poverty reduction? Hydrocarbons. Capital flows are heavily directed toward the energy sector, bringing 45 to 50 billion USD per year into South American upstream investment. These projects serve as primary growth drivers, proving that reliable energy access is the bedrock of societal advancement.
Look specifically at Guyana. Commercial oil production began in 2019 and now exceeds 800,000 barrels per day in 2025. The results are nothing short of spectacular. The nation achieved real GDP expansion of nearly 47 percent from 2022 to 2024. Life expectancy increased by 2.5 years over the past decade. The government channels high fiscal revenues through a Natural Resource Fund, financing massive public investments in roads, ports, health facilities, and schools.
Other giants on the continent are making similar strides. Brazil pushes its deepwater pre-salt crude output above 4 million barrels per day, breaking historical records. Concurrently, Argentina unlocks its massive Vaca Muerta shale formation, setting a trajectory to approach 1 million barrels per day by the late 2020s. These oil and gas ramp-ups deliver stronger balances of payments, higher investment, and increased room for macro policy maneuver. They rewrite the map of human prosperity.
The Inexcusable Energy Tyranny that Stalled Development
For too long, international policies dictated by the United States and the European Union choked domestic progress in regions like South America and Africa. Western leaders tied crucial financial aid to global UN-led climate control agendas. They diverted funds originally meant for basic economic development into projects obsessed with an imaginary climate crisis.
Activists promoted these mandates as "God's work," pretending they were saving the planet. These actions achieved the exact opposite by keeping developing nations poor. They trapped the Global South in a state of energy apartheid. The current US administration recognized this destructive pattern and stopped it.
On January 8, 2026, the US Treasury announced its immediate withdrawal from the UN Green Climate Fund. This decisive move halted American funding that bankrolled the United Nations' climate interference in developing countries. Before that, a January 2025 executive order paused 11 billion USD in foreign climate finance.
The State Department systematically canceled over 130 climate contracts that previously bound foreign aid to green ideology. This included a 4.7 million USD SERVIR satellite project tracking climate impacts across the Amazon and suspended 1.45 million USD intended for climate-resilient agriculture schemes in Guyana, Suriname, and Trinidad.
The removal of this red tape allows nations to return to straightforward energy policies with clarity. South American countries can now follow the exact same route of energy abundance that paved the way for economic success in the US, Europe, India, and China. Wealth generation and reliable energy provide the infrastructure and technological tools required to adapt to adverse weather conditions.
Climate science, CO2, and Christian prudence
Another key development rarely mentioned in church circles is the emerging scientific pushback against climate alarmism. A 2025 U.S. Department of Energy report highlighted that increased atmospheric CO2 directly promotes plant growth and global greening, with rising CO2 levels contributing to higher productivity.
Paleoclimate research repeatedly shows that the Earth has passed through warmer and cooler periods long before industrialization, with natural variability playing a central role. Many studies point to historic intervals when temperatures and CO2 were higher than today, yet life flourished. Christians who believe that God designed a resilient creation should not be surprised by a climate system that can adapt, nor should they accept policies that hold back the poor for the sake of marginal theoretical temperature targets.
The shift toward energy abundance—beginning with the Industrial era in the West and now in places like South America and Africa—is not a betrayal of creation care. It is a return to biblical common sense. God placed coal, oil, and gas in the ground, along with sunlight, wind, uranium, and every other source of energy. The dominion mandate in Genesis calls humanity to cultivate and use the earth’s resources responsibly, not to leave them untapped while children grow up in the dark.
Vijay Jayaraj is a Research Associate for Developing Countries with the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation and a Science and Research Associate at the CO2 Coalition. He holds a M.S. in environmental sciences from the University of East Anglia, a postgraduate degree in Energy management from Robert Gordon University, both in the U.K., and a B.S. in engineering from Anna University, India. He served as a research assistant at the University of British Columbia’s Changing Oceans Research Unit in Canada.
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