After reading through the article, I have decided to make my diagram about how climate change lead to the creation of the Copenhagen Accord and how is that going to help reduce greenhouse gases and finally lead to climate mitigation. First, the Copenhagen Accord was created by the UNFCC in hopes to grab each countries attention and explain to them the impacts of climate change and what will happen if nothing is done. Some countries support this and some don’t which made the United States take action and look for allies. Along with looking for allies, the United States benefits directly from any support of the Copenhagen Accord. The United States gathers support through various techniques. One technique was providing 30 money dollars to the Maldives to gain their support. Another technique involved threatening Ethiopia to sign the Copenhagen Accord or the discussion is done and United States will stop aiding them in any way possible. Another technique included spying on Todd Stern to gain classified information from him. The final way involved cables which required the United States to support Saudi Arabia and help them move away from a petroleum economy. All of these ways helped to gain the support of 140 countries that have signed or are about to sign the Copenhagen Accord. The article claimed that nearly 80% of carbon dioxide comes from these countries and having their effort will help tremulously. Since all of these countries are working on reducing greenhouse gases and will continue to reduce greenhouse gases. The reduction of greenhouse gases will lead to climate Mitigation.

I think that there needs to be a change and climate change is an important topic. Carbon dioxide needs to decrease and there are going to have to be changes in the world to accomplish that. I agree with what the Copenhagen Accord is about and how it is trying to recognize the impacts that climate change is having and could potentially have in the future. I don’t agree with some of the methods to get support from other countries, but I realize that it is necessary that you have to take certain steps when needed to gain support of other countries. Since the United States is one of the most influential countries, they are going to help lead the way whenever possible. I think that all the countries need to help the people of their country make an individual impact like what was talked about in this module. We have the choice to choose low impact foods and buy carbon offsets and both will help reduce greenhouse gases. As a country, we can come together and put in place more projects to help reduce greenhouse gases. Also, the government can offer more incentives to “go green” to help reduce greenhouse gases by higher tax credits based on what you do on your own. Also, a lot of people in the country don’t know how bad climate change is or just doesn’t care. Being able to tell those people or show them why it’s their business to care will also get more people to help reduce greenhouse gases.