This whole story starts with humanity’s need for an energy source. In today’s world, the majority of that energy source comes from fossil fuels, which have shown to be one of the biggest contributors to climate change. The burning of fossil fuels leads to a buildup of greenhouse gasses in the troposphere, which leads to a greenhouse effect caused by the gasses reflecting radiation back towards the earth’s surface. This trapping of heat has caused warming of the Earth’s climate, and most politicians and world leaders believe that we need to slow down or stop this change. World  leaders congregated at the UN’s climate change summit, and tried to push a climate accord that would decrease the amount of greenhouse gasses that we  put into the atmosphere, and provide assistance to poor countries that were the most effected by climate change. As with many international political processes, each country had its own agenda for what should transpire from the treaty. The U.S. attempted to bribe developing countries to reach its agenda, with many of the conversations being via cable. Wikileaks hacked the servers and gained access to the private conversations and then made them available to the public, exposing the U.S.’s attempted manipulation of the smaller developing countries. Some argue that this knowledge should have been public knowledge from the begging, but others condemn Wikileaks for leaking these private conversations. Your view on the U.S.’s attempted manipulation is probably determined by whether you value ends ethics or means ethics. The U.S. was attempting to resolve the climate change dilemma, but could have been conducting itself in a more diplomatic manor in this case.

The thing about climate change that separates it from nearly every other conflict going on in the world right now is that it has the potential to effect every single country in one way or the other. Some countries may find their coastal cities underwater, while other countries may experience extensive droughts, and others may be at greater risk from hurricanes and other massive storms. The point of this argument is that since climate change doesn’t discriminate which countries if effects, all countries should have an incentive to try to bring an end to it. Climate change is also unique in the fact that it requires all countries to work together to solve it. If just the U.S. or just China made efforts to reduce it’s share of greenhouse gas emissions we may see some minor decline in global warming, but certainly not to the extent as if all countries made those changes together. This is why I believe that while the U.S. probably should have conducted itself in a more diplomatic manor while dealing with the climate accord. I believe you should always conduct yourself with the assumption that someone is watching. In other words, don’t do something differently just because you don’t think someone will see. If the U.S. believed that it was conducting itself in an ethical manor, then it shouldn’t have anything to hide. I don’t believe that Wikileaks was ethical in the way that it obtained these conversations, but then again I don’t believe that it should be something that the government should have hidden from us.