In my diagram, I talked about how climate change caused the Copenhagen Accord to happen. The abundance of greenhouse gas in the atmosphere and the amount of fossil fuels being burned lead to the Copenhagen climate change summit that was called to solve this problem and stop global warming. At this summit, the Copenhagen Accord was established which favored the United States because it said that countries must pledge to lessen the amount of greenhouse gas emissions released into the atmosphere. This caused the United States to seek out allies to help support this accord since the United States is the greatest contributor to climate change. In order to rally support, the United States used manipulative methods such as secret cables, the CIA, and threats/bribes in order to ultimately gain support of 140 countries for the Copenhagen Accord. Ultimately, this was an act of power on the United States rather than an act of trying to preserve the environment. I focused primarily on the Copenhagen Accord to highlight the importance the United State’s contribution to climate change. In my diagram, I began with Co2 emissions since this is the root cause of climate change and the Copenhagen Accord works to bring countries together in order to mitigate the emission of greenhouse gases – primarily the Co2 emitted from burning fossil fuels. The Copenhagen Accord would require specific actions taken by each country in order for each country to cut down on greenhouse gas emission. This affected poorer countries, who did not support the Copenhagen Accord, since these countries did not have the funds to implement a program to reduce their already close to zero emissions. The United States rallied the poor country support through the schemes stated previously.

The cables should have been leaked to the public because everyone has a right to know what happened. The United States should not have acted and conducted the accord in the way that they did. The public deserves to know how the United States acts especially when it comes to concerning issues such as climate change. This behavior upsets people and is not in the public’s interest if it is kept a secret. This was unethical and there was no distributive justice for poorer countries because they did not contribute as much to global warming. They do not have the same technology that can cause as much pollution as the United States can and is therefore unfair to these poorer countries. The United States needs to take individual action and decrease the amount of green house gas emissions that they are producing and not worry so much about other countries as the United States is the leading contributor to greenhouse gases. The United States should implement its own carbon reduction policies along with influences other countries that produce an abundance of carbon to do the same as climate change can only be solved through collective action. All countries need to take action in stopping the problem of climate change, as all countries are contributors even if some more than others. It may be more important that the United States take actions because of the amount of carbon that it produces, but this problem cannot be solved just by individual action of the United States.