First, as someone who deals with climate as a form of study, the word “climate” is an extremely dangerous word to say around politicians. This article unveils, through WikiLeaks, how the United States conducted surveillance, and how they also bribed and/or threatened other nations, particularly smaller ones, to adapt to the Copenhagen Accord which would inherently benefit the United States.

Climate change graph/diagram showing the interconnection between climate, politics, and big money.

“The Kyoto Protocol is an international treaty which extends the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change that commits State Parties to reduce greenhouse gases emissions, based on the premise that global warming exists, and man-made CO₂ emissions have caused it.” It also states that restrictions are made on a global level for emissions. The Copenhagen Accord states that nations are responsible for their own emission control. This sparked a huge fire between large, economically sound nations versus those whose economy has yet to have enough support to sustain major mitigations to adapt to controlling their own emissions.

Since the United States conducted bribes and particularly, and I emphasize the usage of particularly, conducted surveillance to see what other nations were going to do in response to the Accord, it was later exposed by WikiLeaks to the world. Thereafter, over 100 nations are in support of the Copenhagen Accord, which is a good thing. I highly, highly disagree with the U.S. conducting bribes and threats, as well as surveillance (despite climate change posing a very high threat to national security, but it will happen regardless of human induced emissions).

These cable leaks really put a sore on the United States, I think. They were highly unethical and served a great injustice towards smaller nations such as Ethiopia, for instance. What throws me to this day is that the U.S. is one of the richest and most powerful nations in the world, despite a near 200% debt to GDP. The fact that U.S. was not in this case looking to help developing nations and rather spied sets a precedence unlike any other, especially since the U.S. is not the only nation dealing with climate change. Climate change has transpired for millions of years, and is a global issue that needs to be resolved from a perspective of humans enhancing global warming, increased salinity in the oceans, etc.