Are President Donald Trump and India going to trigger the "Venezuela's Climate Tipping Point"?

With the world's largest oil reserves, 303 billion barrels of crude oil, Venezuela is sitting on a "climate bomb"! Geographically, Venezuela faces the world's largest oil consumer, the United States, which consumes 7.3 billion barrels per year. Although estimates of these oil reserves date back to the bureaucratic era of President Hugo Chavez, who died on March 5, 2013, one fact is certain: Venezuelan oil is bituminous oil, difficult and very expensive to extract.

The realities and concept of "Climate Tipping Points" are described, among others, in three indisputable analyses: "climate tipping points - too risky to bet against," Nature Science journal, November 28, 2019; "Understanding climate tipping points," European Space Agency, December 6, 2023; and "The hidden climate tipping point scientists worry most about," January 3, 2025, BBC Science Focus Magazine.

Although estimating the area and rate of change of each Climate Tipping Point on the planet is difficult - such as in West Antarctic glaciers, the Gulf Stream, the Amazon and the Congo Basin rainforests - it is easier to visualize the phenomenon they represent as a "cascade of releases of ancient CO2 stocks." This is because global warming is not a process occurring at the same rate or with similar effects everywhere on the planet. While human-caused GreenHouse Gas emissions are raising the Earth's overall temperature, in certain places thresholds will be crossed where huge quantities of "warming" gases will enter the atmosphere, increasing global warming but also "opening" other "ancient" natural stocks of CO2. According to this process, Venezuela's 303 billion barrels of crude oil reserves represent a genuine and disastrous Climate Tipping Point.

Who misses Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro, abducted by a US raid on January 3, 2026? He was responsible for the country's economic collapse, with GDP contracting by 75% between 2014 and 2023, for fraud in the 2018 and 2024 presidential elections, and for Soviet-style political repression, leading to the displacement of 7.9 million refugees, destabilizing Latin America and even the US. And while on April 9, 2024, a former Vice President and Minister of Petroleum was imprisoned for embezzling $15 billion, inevitably implicating the highest-ranking officials and Nicolás Maduro himself!

The future of Venezuela and its "Climate Tipping Point" is uncertain: between the heads of American oil companies, frightened by the exorbitant cost of extracting and refining bituminous oil and by political instability, and Indian oil companies that could process this "dirty oil" at a low cost in the Jamnagar refinery.

With 2,800 km of coastline facing the US, Venezuela could nevertheless abandon its "Oil Climate Tipping Point" to become a "New Florida," offering many sunny Rivieras and promoting ecotourism like neighboring successful Costa Rica.