2. My core focus was on how greenhouse gases, from our use of fossil fuels, led to climate change; which, ultimately formed the Copenhagen accord.  This was the United State’s idea of forming a plan to counter climate change.  The Copenhagen accord was formed at a convention in Copenhagen where countries got together trying to come up with ways to reduce counteract the impact that greenhouse gases had on the environment.  Although the initially reaction to the accord was both for and against the accord, the U.S. used techniques of espionage and bribery to get the approvals of other countries.  In terms of espionage, the U.S. sent secret cables to the African Union’s Meles Zenawi stating that “sign the accord or all discussion end now.”  In terms of bribery, the U.S. was promising aid and financial relief to poorer countries.  Even though this was done the views on the accord were still split between being for and against it.  Although as a result the U.S. received backing of most of the United Nations, it wasn’t purely voluntary.

3.  I think that the cables should have been made public.  This is because climate change is world wide problem and the way the U.S. got the other countries to sign the Copenhagen accord was just underhanded.  To me, the idea of obtaining support through the use of such underhanded methods could result in a lot of backlash form both the countries that were the targets of these methods as well as the citizens.  Such backlash could include: information not being released as it should be, countries planning against the U.S., having even less team work on solving the current problem on hand, and ultimately trust in the U.S. being lost.  This is the best example of what we learned in the ethics module, where the ends justifies the means.  However, in this case I do not believe we will ever meet the end since our means to go about this problem just causes more animosity.