When determining what was the most prevalent theme when it came to issues surrounding the climate change and Copenhagen Accord issue, I found that money drove so many issues.  Once I put the idea of money at the peak of the diagram, I demonstrated how the problem of burning fossil fuels is stemmed from money, as fossil fuels is typically the least expensive option than exploring renewable sources.  Money is additionally a large factor in why the United States is, and strives to remain, a global superpower.  This is not necessarily a bad thing-  it is hard to deny that the United States strives to have a strong, healthy economy for its citizens.  On the other hand, however, it may take away from developing countries’ resources and opportunities.  Still, the U.S. asserts itself as a leader in issues that affect everyone globally, such as climate change.  The Copenhagen Accord was developed, and it posed a challenge to generate support for the ideas in order to make strides in mitigating humans’ negative impact on the environment for a healthier world.  Understanding the degree of influence the United States has over the global community, it offered astronomical amounts of financial aid to countries such as Maldives, put pressure on countries like Ethiopia, and made many attempts to spy on and send secret cables to other countries.  When these efforts were revealed in a WikiLeaks forum, it turned some heads.  Still, the Copenhagen Accord was able to generate support from three quarters of those countries that were parties to the UN climate change convention.

I brought my diagram to full circle with the connection back to the recurring theme of money.  The concept of money is a very interesting and dynamic topic.  On one hand, it creates a dependency on the donor nation like the United States, for example.  When you have a dependency on a nation, you can become subject to issues on their agenda.  When a dependency cycle comes into play, global politics and power can often become the forefront subject that drives decisions by superpowers.  On the other hand, financing developing countries is positive in that it allows for opportunities for those nations to develop themselves.  This also ties into underdeveloped countries receiving compensation for being affected by climate change when they did not have the capabilities to heavily affect the change.  For instance, a poorer country with limited access to fossil fuels will likely not create even a fraction of a carbon footprint that an industrialized nation does.  I believe the U.S. State Department cables should not have been released because it did not result in any productive results other than select distrust in the government.  While I do not think the method was a completely good one or a noble one, the ends truly do justify the ends.  I believe in the global community, a strong and unwavering approach to getting others on board will help the collective problem of making Earth more sustainable.  Sometimes harsh steps, like appealing to developing countries through finances, or spying on other countries are necessary, though they may not be appealing from a larger crowd.  The most important thing to me is getting results.  In a world divided by so many individual action issues, we must continue to explore steps that will augment collective actions.

After reading through the article, I tried my best to explain my understanding of the article into a systems diagram. Since the article itself is on the WikiLeaks, I kept that part right in the center. I feel it draws more attention to the reader and shows that it is the focal point of the diagram by sitting in the middle. From there, I have an arrow pointing towards US motives, which later emphasizes on their negotiation chips they used with other nations. The reason I have multiple arrows coming out from “US’s Motives”, is to explain the relationship between everything. I feel US’s motives had a strategical negotiation tactic which also put pressure on other nations to be associated with the Copenhagen Accord. So in order to illustrate that, I have an arrow going to each one of those box items. The section where it states that some nations were being pressured is basically emphasizing on the fact that economic and monetary incentives were used to get them on board. This eventually led to 116 countries being associated with the Copenhagen Accord, and 26 more still with the intent on being on board. The arrow to the far left that curves around the diagram itself is illustrating that the accord regulates greenhouse gas emissions which ultimately leads to climate change.

I personally believe that climate change is a major issue for everyone in the world to worry about. Just speaking from personal experiences alone is enough to think about climate change. This winter we experienced days with over 70 degrees, and now in April, we’ve gotten snow and below freezing weather. That just isn’t normal. I personally don’t think the climate change diplomacy is being handled properly. After reading the article, it’s almost like the poorer are being exploited to join the wealthier nations in their views if they believe in them or not. The best approach to climate change issues should be a global one. Where everyone puts their minds together, and tries to identify the main source of issues and work together in fixing it. At the end of the day, climate change will affect the entire world, not just the poorer nations.

The WikiLeaks brought up an important issue on the relation between global environmentalism and politics. The news started with the current environmental problem (climate change) due to over consumption of fossil fuel. This problem needed to be tackled by a major global action. This was when a consensus starts taking place, firstly with the Copenhagen Climate Change Summit being organized to involve countries of the UN members to meet and come to an agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emission. The Copenhagen Accord was set, but it appeared that the means to achieve it was thought to be unethical. The article mentioned that the United States-one of the major polluter, used political and financial pressure to get nations on board to the accord. Most smaller nations weren’t on board with the accord because they thought they didn’t contribute to the pollution but still felt the negative effects of global warming. They wanted money that they thought were their right to make up for the fact that these other nations have harmed them. These nations were not cooperative to US wishes, so the United States is using the information they wrongfully obtained as ways to convince or blackmail these other nations. In the end, 140 countries pledged to support the Copenhagen Accord, which was what the US had aimed for and accounts for almost 75% of the parties to the UN climate change convention and, accord supporters like to point out, are responsible for well over 80% of current global greenhouse gas emissions.

I have different views on the collective actions that took place. Firstly, I personally, believe that the State Department cables should not have been released with the reason that the leaks may have substantially created a hostile environment between involving countries that could break down negotiations and other diplomatic relationships with the United States. I’m also now a bit more informed of how the ‘big guy’ politics work (by reading this and watching the House of Cards). Although it is viewed as unethical by many, including me, it is almost crucial that blackmail and lobbying effort be part of achieving a unitary decision. From the smaller, less wealthier countries’ point of view, the leaks is probably a godsend to them, showing that wealthy countries do not have the upper hand over them anymore. The actions of the leaker and news organizations to expose the information is like saying to the U.S. “If you can spy and attack these countries, we can spy and attack and expose you too”.

My diagram starts with the root cause of this entire issue: carbon emissions causing climate change. This is an unsustainable behavior which requires some form of global action to solve. That is where the Copenhagen accord comes in. The main issue is how the United States is using political and financial pressure to get nations on board to sign the accord. The United States is the worst offender of the polluters according to the article, and many nations are not on board with the accord as it favors the United States over less developed nations who have felt the negative effects of global warming but have not actually caused it. They feel that money should be given to them by nations in order to make up for the fact that these other nations have harmed them. They view the money as a right not a privilege. These nations are not complying the the United States wishes, so the United States is using the information contained in the secret cables as ways to convince or blackmail these other nations. The United States is using political and financial pressure on other nations in order to get the Copenhagen accord passed in a way that makes it seem well supported. By doing this in secret, they are concealing the truth from the world and obscuring the real reason for the accord. Other nations are being subject to these pressures to in order to get them on board to the accord. The Secret Cables connect to the small nations and others which is why they are coming from the U.S. in support of the Copenhagen accord.

I believe that the cables probably should not have been made public in the way they were but now that they have been it is best to acknowledge the problems and move forward. There is a reason government secrecy exists in most cases. The people making these decisions have more training, experience, and information than we will ever have so we can criticize as much as we want but they probably know what they are doing to a large extent. As for the diplomacy being used, I believe there probably is not much alternative. Other nations are getting money for a reason: it is the only way to solve the problems they have with the accord. The United States is not looking to give away with money. The idea behind diplomacy is to give something you have to get something that you want. The United States exerting political and financial pressure is pretty much exactly what they should be doing diplomatically. As long as you agree that the accord is a good thing, getting nations to support it using these tactics probably is good not bad. However, plenty of people inherently distrust the government and also a lot of the world does not like the United States political power. Overall, the diplomacy is a bit shady and backwards but probably is the best thing for the United States in reference to the Copenhagen accord.

My diagram simply portrays the relationship among all the factors in between the subjects of climate change, and the Wikileaks’ cables. Although it stops at Wikileaks on one side, a cyclic behavior can be seen on the other side. Ideally, the cyclic process can be slowed down if restrictions effectively help decrease overall emissions before it’s so late that all hope is lost. The diagram also portrays how hacking and bribes were what ultimately led to the Wikileaks, which in my opinion were bound to happen (even overdue). When global climate change became evident enough of an issue, the Copenhagen Accord was the United Nations’ ideal call for action. Nations like the United States displayed heavy interest in the global deal as it showed potential advantages and even complete problem solutions. In order to better persuade developing nations to get on board with the accord, the US used spying efforts, along with cyber attacks on countries’ databases in order to collect resourceful data that could be used in the United States’ favor. The United Nations call for action aimed to cut down on global greenhouse gas emissions by the year 2020. The Wikileaks became the bridge that linked the public’s level of knowledge to the United States’ role in getting to the Copenhagen Accord, which included cyber attacks, bribes, data breaches, and international threats. With the recent “Panama Papers” leak, I think A LOT more essential information like this will soon surface, taking into consideration the notable size difference in data.

As respectful as I am of others’ privacy, I do believe the United States Government deserved for this information to be leaked. First, it serves the US right to have their data breached in the same manner they were attempting to breach others’, which can serve as a solid lesson. Asides from that, I also believe the American public has a given right to be made aware of what’s really going on when it comes to international policy, and the practices that tie to it. Although the American public is deserving of information this sensible, it can be beneficial for the rest of the world as well, making other nations more aware of how we (The US) play a role with climate change, as opposed to how we portray it to be. I think spying, data breaching, and hacking are all dirty and corrupt ways to push for an agreement such as the Copenhagen Accord, which can all tie back to financial status, and the role money plays when it comes to global action. Asides from the ethical conflicts faced in this whole dilemma, it also shows how vulnerability is a serious factor, and how powerhouse governments like the United States use this vulnerability in their favor in order to get what they want. As mentioned earlier, the Panama Papers was notably denser than the Wikileaks, and I think once all that data has been sorted through by journalists and investigators, a lot more information similar to this will be made available to the public.

My flow chart is on the following page: https://geog030.dutton.psu.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/4463/2016/04/homework-1.pdf

Concerning the talk about environmental protocol, the United States decided to do many things that are morally wrong, to push their own agenda. The focus of the discussion was not “What can we do to reduce our negative impact on the environment?” The discussion became “What do we need to do to influence other countries to work towards our goals?” In this conference we decide to bribe other countries with funding for projects. People in the U.S. government hacked the computer of a U.S. citizen to send an email from his email account to deceive the person the email was sent to. Hacking the computer of an individual with the goal of using that computer to deceive the representatives of another country is wrong for multiple reasons. The United States also fell to the level of threatening the Ethiopian officials to gain their support in the matter. We also cut our aid to the countries of Bolivia and Ecuador because they were refusing to support us in this discussion. This is another example of an individual entity taking a collective action problem (global climate change) and being too selfish to make sacrifices to provide everyone with benefits. That being said, I understand countries bargaining for power, but when the representatives of a country stoop to a level in which they are doing things that they would put their citizens into jail for doing, that country is obviously going down the wrong path. Stooping to these levels during a discussion that is supposed to be based on mutually benefitting all current and future countries (by protecting the earth) — I just don’t understand the purpose of these actions in this context.

There are many benefits and many disadvantages to releasing information like this to the public. When releasing sensitive information, the government often decides if the information will be a danger to the public or not. If the United States got word that its databases were hacked by another country, this information would not be released to the public because it would likely cause mass panic. This is the reason for many of the government cover-ups we see today. In the case of the cables, the United States government likely did not have to worry about the danger to its people, but the information was not released anyway. Another thing to consider when releasing information to the public is how the information impacts the reputation of the government. This information was likely not expressed because it would have harmed the reputation of the government as it has been doing from the leaks. In this case, the people of the United States deserved to know what their government was doing, while representing them, but knowing would indirectly, negatively impact them by the reputation of their country. If the public knows this information, the world knows this information, and seeing the evils of a country only generates bad feelings toward that country. All of these points become a balancing act between the right of the people to know what their government is doing throughout the world, with the direct and indirect safety of the citizens. I can not personally decide which of these two things outweighs the other. I think the representatives working in that conference should have taken other, more honorable routes towards solving this issue. The money that they would have not spent on bribing other countries could easily have gone to fixing the issue itself or funding for advertisements to better promote topics we learned about in this unit, such as carbon offsetting or reducing our output of carbon.

1. 
2. Support for the Copenhagen accord affects climate change through actions of governments around the world. Threats against parties (e.g. U.S. to Ethiopia) increase support for Copenhagen. Distrust between parties (e.g. U.S. vs. China, India) affects agreement. Aid to poor nations that support Copenhagen (e.g. Maldives) provides incentive to support Copenhagen. Cutting aid to nations that oppose Copenhagen (e.g. Bolivia) serves as a deterrent against opposing Copenhagen.
3. Perhaps it is a good thing that the State Department cables are made public. Now we can see what our representatives are doing. such as the cyberattacks which seem totally unethical.

030 Climate Change

In my diagram, I illustrated the idea behind the Copenhagen Accord and ways in which the U.S. tried to gain the support of countries who did not want to cooperate. Climate change is a major issue and I wanted to make this clear by making it the head of all of the other points. Due to the climate change, the Copenhagen Accord was proposed by the U.S. This meant that the U.S. needed a supporting cast of allies to have their back. Getting allies wasn’t easy however and the U.S. had to bribe countries so that they would join them in their plan. The U.S. targeted countries which were significantly affected by the climate change and offered them large sums of money. If they did not accept the offer, then the U.S. threatened to discontinue communication between the countries. Countries like Ethiopia were put in tough situations because they did not want to form the alliance and join the Copenhagen Accord but because of the U.S.’s threat to stop all further communication, they had no choice but to join. This was almost always a lose situation for countries like Ethiopia because they rely on the U.S. and even if they didn’t the U.S. used confidentiality cables to spy on countries that did not cooperate. Eventually 140 countries pledged to support the Copenhagen Accord. This was what the U.S. aimed for and it accounts for about 80 % of the greenhouse emissions. When it was brought to the U.S.’s attention that WikiLeaks leaked information about the U.S. using these cables to spy on opposing countries they lost all trust for the opposing countries. This destroyed relationships with the U.S. and several other countries that are still not 100 % fixed yet.

The United States did not handle this situation very professionally at all. This was a very shady and unethical approach which should have been handled with more care. As an American, I was not happy to learn about this and it was sickening to hear that they went through with the idea and embarrassing to know that they actually got caught. However, I think that it serves them justice and that the information being leaked was right. Nations with less money are less fortunate and have fewer resources to deal with climate change alone. They need the help of a bigger and stronger country like the U.S. but the U.S. acted like bullies and these countries were not given many choices. The U.S. should have found a way to be more open and sympathetic towards these countries. The Copenhagen does not seem to be too successful either so at the end of the day, the U.S. ruined some important relationships for nothing. I believe that the U.S. tries to do too much sometimes. While it is hard to always do the right thing as such a major player in the world and with the spotlight always on you, this is one failure that is just unacceptable. The U.S. does a lot of good for the world and often times does protect smaller countries, especially with our large and powerful military. However, it is the failures that people remember and this was a big mistake. I hope that the U.S. learns from the mistakes that it made in this situation and does not repeat these mistakes ever again.

From the information that was gathered in the reading  assignment for this learning activity, I was able to create my systems diagram for the Copenhagen Accord. The main driving force in this diagram is the growing climate change stemming from increased greenhouse emissions and other pollutants. This led to the Copenhagen Climate Change Summit in 2009. From here, the United States was in support of the Copenhagen Accord, which needed more support from other countries in order for it to pass. In order to pass this, the United States sent intelligence agent and other diplomats to bribe other countries to be their allies in support of the bill. This led to 116 countries signing the proposed document to decrease emissions, with the total in support coming to 140 countries. This led to standards set by the accord that will be carried out by policies in individual countries. This leads to benefits for rich countries such as the United States that are able to adapt to these changes, but leads to developing countries not being able to upkeep these standards. After these events have taken place, this bribery and other unethical practices have come to light from the convention. This highlights how the United States is able to blackmail and bribe its way into getting its way on the international scale whenever it comes to new standards and agreements where they can reap as much reward as possible. This leads to many countries and the general population having a hostile attitude toward the United States that can lead to hostile environments that can cause consequences down the road.

I, personally, do not believe that the State Department cables should not have been released. I believe that they should not have been released to the public for a number of reasons. The first reason was because that it creates an hostile environment between countries that could break down negotiations and other diplomatic advances in relationships with the United States. Another reason is that some of the developing countries that were being bribed may not have had the financial stability of the United States in order to relieve pressure from the oil industry to get their source of energy, even though many of these negotiations were  unethical. Through these negotiations, however, the United States was able to gain over one hundred countries in support of the Copenhagen Accord in order to bring the global greenhouse emissions down as well as providing financials to other countries that have a high dependence on fossil fuels. On the other hand, by having these cables released, it creates a collective action solution to the increasing problem of climate change. The more informed that the general population becomes on the ever increasing problem of climate change, then the more people will want to step up and do their duty to help mitigate this problem by seeing that countries all over the world are taking steps to put a stop to this problem. In addition to this, the United States could have used the data that has been gathered over the years to build a strong case in support of this collective action instead of using bribes where it could have publicly provided financial support to developing countries. This could have also set the stage for the global issue in that the U.S. would have been at the forefront of curbing this problem.

In my diagram, I presented the main points of the Copenhagen Accord and the strategies the United State tried to use to support other opposing countries. I started with climate change, which was one of the main points in the article. I stated with this because people realized that climate change has become a serious issue. I then connected climate change to how the United state proposes the Copenhagen Accord. To have the Copenhagen Accord put into effect, the United States needs to find allies. In order for the United States to get allies they offered money to other countries if they joined them on their plan. They offered money to smaller countries, like Maldives. The United States offered a large amount of money and the countries would accept the offer because the climate change affected them significantly. The United States also threaten to stop all communication with other countries if they did not agree with them. One country that was mentioned that the United States threatened to stop all communication with was Ethiopia. Ethiopia was against joining the Accord, which is when the United States sent them a confidentiality cable saying to sign the accord. After they realized the threat threat that the unites States was opposing, Ethiopia and decided to join the Accord. If certain countries did not agree with the United States, they spied on them using confidentiality cables. When WikiLeaks leaked about the United States using cables to spy on opposing countries. Because of the spying on the opposing countries, the United states lost the trust of all the opposing countries.

The way the United States handles this whole situation was selfish and untrustworthy. The United States using the cables caused countries to lose their trust and not want to join them on the Copenhagen Accord. Although some of the countries were suffering from climate change, they still chose not to join the United Stated after WikiLeaks leaked about the cables. I think that it was right and fair for the cables to be leaked. The other countries had a right to know about what the United States was doing. The countries had a right to know because the United States bribed them and threatened them. With the United States, the countries signed the Accord for the wrong reasons. Climate change, a collective action problem, is a problem is every country. The United States should have gone about the subject of greenhouse emissions in another way.

My diagram discusses the problem of climate change, the solution of the Copenhagen Accord and the justification of WikiLeaks. Climate change is a global issue while a few nations are far more responsible than the rest of the world. These nations are typically post-industrialized; however, underdeveloped nations deal with the same backlash of climate change because it is global in scale. The Copenhagen Accord was a proposal aimed at remediating climate change. Some countries were in favor, but climate change is just as much an economic problem as it is an environmental one. The agreement would impose different effects on certain nations, as each nation has a differing economy. This particular agreement would work well for the United States, while being opposed by nations like Brazil and Bolivia. Through wiretaps, bribery and computer hacking, the United States was able to get enough developing nations on board with the Copenhagen Accord. As a result, the Accord was adopted by the United Nations. To sum things up, the United States used its economic and political power to corruptly influence a global decision. Had this been about oil or weapons, Fox News would still be airing the story to this day. My diagram aims to communicate the message that the United States wrongfully influenced nations. For example, Haiti will feel the repercussions of climate change, despite releasing far fewer emissions than post-industrialized nations. Once again, money and political power have come before the environment.

The cables deserved to be leaked, plain and simple. As previously stated, climate change is a global issue created by a handful of nations. Poorer nations are less equipped to deal with the end results of the climate change. For example, precipitation changes may lead to desertification, resulting in poor agricultural conditions. The United States is attempting to stay in the driver’s seat and run the world. I would be completely fine with that position if this was an issue of terrorism but it is not. Nations in Europe sustain a high quality of life without such a disastrous environmental impact. Economies are very complex, but in my modest opinion, the United States could survive with a change in economic structure focusing on more sustainable practices. While the Copenhagen Accord was not a terribly binding agreement, the economies of smaller, less powerful countries have far less room for change. I hope the United States is considering the global effects of its decisions. As a whole, the Copenhagen Accord seems like one big failure. Countries do not agree on its success and it does not guarantee much. A document that clearly states what needs to be accomplished by when and who would be a much better solution. Developing nations should ideally have just as much of a say as post-industrialized and industrialized nations, as climate change is global in scale. As an environmental geography student. I hope my own country can get its act together on climate change. I’ll end with the question, “If Al Gore were elected, where would we be?”

The article WikiLeaks cables reveal how US manipulated climate accord tells us how America used spying, threats and promises of aid to get support for Copenhagen accord. It reveals the hidden dark side behind the global climate change negotiations and the U.S. is the centre of this event. This diagram shows how the U.S. use diplomatic tactics to overwhelm opposition to the Copenhagen Accord. The beginning of this event is the increasing greenhouse gas emission, which results in global climate change. In order to better determine every country’s responsibility, an international climate treaty is needed. After long-term negotiation, Copenhagen Accord is the one that best fit the U.S. interest. In order to support this accord, the U.S. would need help from other countries to back this treaty. The U.S. use money and threats to buy political support and use spying and cyberwarfare to seek out leverage. WikiLeaks reveal diplomatic cables that the U.S. used to persuade other countries into signing the Copenhagen Accord. For example, although Saudi Arabia was not a fan of the accord, but the U.S. committed to help with its economic diversification on the condition of Saudi Arabia back the U.S.. By February 2010, 116 countries had associated themselves with the Copenhagen Accord, and 26 countries were intending to associate. The total of 140 nations represent almost 75% of the countries that are parties to the UN climate change convention and are responsible for over 80% of current global greenhouse gas emissions. With the majority of countries supporting the Copenhagen Accord, it would be beneficial to climate change.

Although the end result is to lower greenhouse gas emission and help the climate change problem, I think what the U.S. has done to gain more supports is not the best option. Climate change mitigation is a collective action problem, which means the individual interest conflicts with the group’s interest. Reaching an agreement on an international climate treaty is difficult, since every country has its own interest and different opinions. Poor countries thinks that it’s unfair for rich countries to ask them to reduce emissions since the the poor are just trying to develop a good living standard which the rich cause most of the emissions. Furthermore, reducing emissions is also very difficult since most greenhouse gases are emitted by the burning of fossil fuels, and limiting emission would also limit the use of fossil fuels. The U.S. used political and financial aids as leverage to persuade other less powerful countries to back the Copenhagen Accord, while not every one of these countries favor the treaty. But in order to receive help from America, these countries had to support the treaty and somehow “ignore” its own interest in this treaty. So I think it’s unfair to the other countries. Some ways to improve the current situation can be used to make this process fairer for every country. For example, countries can be devided into different development level, more developed countries can set a higher goal in reducing emission. Or they can be grouped by emission level, high-emission countries should take more responsibilities in reducing emission.

My diagram shows the closed loop between climate change and climate negotiations. The need for energy in our day and age has caused major climate change as a whole which is what starts the whole loop. From there people identify the issue and call for things like collective and individual action to help fix it. One collective action method practiced by our world community is having climate negotiations were they come up with agreed upon accords to collectively change in order to better the environment. However, as seen in the diagram while countries like the U.S. who have a big carbon footprint agree to the easily achievable goals compared to our economy, smaller countries refuse to agree as they cant meet these goals as well as hardly contribute to the problem as a whole. This is were bribes and threats from bigger countries come in to play. This can be seen in the cables released by wikilcnks showing how the U.S. was able to pay compensation to smaller countries to just agree for the United States benefit. Although it gives power to the richer countries it does in turn close the loop by forcing these countries to join on ad support increasing mitigation around the world and reducing climate change. In fact with 75% of all countries who signed being responsible for about 80% of the all greenhouse gasses, showing that although the methods may have been flawed and go against most peoples ethics the end product was successful leaving the question of does the end justify the means?

In my own opinion what the United Sates did is completely unethical and wrong. It is not fair for larger countries to use its economical and political muscles to overpower the best interests of everybody around the world. While some people may argue that sometimes you need to just do what you need to do to get something done, I am more of a means justifying the end kind of person. Just as in our very own tax system there should be a sliding bar responsibility depending on the carbon footprint of each country. The United Sates being the largest contributor to green house gases, we should ethically be responsible for making more efforts to reduce, while smaller countries or countries who have a low carbon footprint should have lower minimum responsibility. So while everybody is encouraged  to contribute as much as possible since were all in this together, there would be a sliding quota depending on independent variables of each country. With this being said I completely think that these cables should be released for everybody to see, the government in put in place by the people and for the people so any actions of our politicians is a direct reflection of us and what we want so we shall be informed. In fact with more people informed it makes it easier to make a collective action effort to better the environment so people are aware of the issues and how we are trying to tackle them.

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In my diagram I attempted to give an overview of all the events that took place in the article “WikiLeaks cables reveal how US manipulated climate accord”. The first core idea shown in my diagram is the over consumption of fossil fuels. The excess amount of fossil fuels causes emission of greenhouse gases. As discussed in the article, the US is one of the world’s largest polluters which makes their role in these events extremely significant.  The emission of the greenhouse gases leads to climate change. Climate change is such an important issue because it affects all living things. This is what led to the Copenhagen summit. The summit was intended to create a plan for countries to collectively deal with climate change. However, the plan that was developed mostly benefited the US. For this reason, many countries refused to sign the agreement. This led to the US using extremely unethical practices to gain the signatures if the opposing countries. In the end 116 countries have associated with the accord. Another 26 countries intend to associate with the copenhagen accord.This is good for climate change but created a hostile political environment.

I think that climate change is a huge issue that society needs to face. I do not think the issue is being taken as seriously as it should be. The creation of the Copenhagen accord is a big step in the right direction in regards the effects climate change has on the environment. However, I disagree with the events and actions taken that led up to the creation of the Copenhagen accord.  I think that the state department cable should have been public from the beginning. This would eliminate the drama that was caused when wikileaks leaked the article. Also, I feel that the accord was way too important for the public to be uninformed about. I think allowing the public to know what is going on could help to reach the goal of stopping climate change faster. I also think this could help to find more monetary support for countries, especially those that are considered to be developing

The core concepts behind my diagram are the problem (fossil fuel emissions), the proposed solution (Copenhagen Accord), and then the means used to create agreed upon political action (Wikileaks Intelligence). The problem of green house gas emissions causing climate change is the core and reasoning behind Wikileaks. Climate change became a global issue that required political action and agreement in the United Nations. The proposed idea for climate change was the Copenhagen Accord. The Copenhagen Accord was a treaty proposal favored by large developed countries and more specifically the Unite States. The United States favored this “global deal” for the purpose of it having the potential to benefit the US and even fix issues for the country. Developing countries, such as China, opposed the accord because it wouldn’t benefit them and had no promise to actually cut enough emissions to actual prevent climate change. With not enough countries onboard, the US had to come up with some persuasion in order to get developing countries to agree to the Copenhagen Accord. This is when cyber warfare and spying by the United States came into play. According to Wikileaks, the United States sent out wiretaps to collect information from the developing countries opposed to the treaty. They US also attempted to hack diplomats’ computers through a code encrypted email that would grant access and control of the diplomats’ computers. This email hack attempt failed fortunately for those diplomats though. Even with the failed hacking attempts, the United States was able to use it power, collected data from the wiretaps, and money to get enough underdeveloped countries to agree to The Copenhagen Accord. This accord then became the UN’s solution to reduce the amount of greenhouse gas emissions by the year 2020. Wikileaks is how this information became public about the US using spying, cyber warfare, money, and threats in order to gain support from underdeveloped countries for the Copenhagen Accord.

In my opinion, the State Department cables deserved to be leaked since the United States was using a similar type of spying and warfare. My opinion follows along the lines of if you are going to “dish it” you better be able to “take it.” Even though this made our country look bad, I think that it was a beneficial for the information to be accessible globally. I think this because it was definitely a wake up call for the US. The Wikileaks showed the US that we aren’t invincible and that we can be hacked. It also is good for the American people to have access to this information, because it shows that US citizens cannot hold full trust in our government. Wikileaks also brings up the issue of how the US is conducting political action. The ethics question we should ask is, “Did the US select the Copenhagen Accord because it was the best solution for climate change or for the United States?” By backing a solution to climate change that holds no guarantee of reducing enough fossil fuel emission and being more beneficial for developed countries may be the answer to the question. In my opinion, I think that the US pushed so hard for the accord in order to have the best solution for the US. I think this because of how they went about getting support for the accord. They were able to gain supporters of the Copenhagen Accord by using threats, money, and spies. This in my opinion is unethical and undiplomatic. The United State morally should conduct climate change diplomacy in way that creates solutions to the emissions problem that are the most beneficial to the majority of the world along with the environment. Without thinking about what is best for the environment when dealing with an environmental issue, the US is not creating the best solution for the problem. Since the Copenhagen Accord held no promises of success or change, it was definitely not the environment’s best option. The Wikileaks helped to show how the US government decided to take collective action in a way that was to benefit the US, rather than the world as a whole.

My diagram basically outlines what went on behind the scenes of the events surrounding the Copenhagen Accord, or how the article says.  This all starts with, in my opinion, the United States is trying to do its part in cutting carbon emissions and other harmful gasses because they are the historical leader in the world’s pollution and want to make up for it in a way.  So the United States tries to supply financial aid to other countries in exchange for their support of the accord in a way similar to the shady dealings of Frank Underwood in House of Cards as Majority Whip.  If the United States wasn’t going to get the signature it wanted from one of the nations, it would simply revoke its aid as a ploy to get its way.  It’s a simple strategy.  Bribes for support…very mobster of them.  These back-channel communications of world leaders made for some interesting negotiations.  “Sign the accord of discussion ends now” the United States threatens to Ethiopia.  In which Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi responds with a request for assurance from President Obama.  This was all made available through WikiLeaks in 2010.  At the time of the article, 140 nations were in compliance with the accord, which was near the target signatures that were intended by the United States.  That is 75 percent of United Nations climate change convention members and those 140 nations are responsible for nearly 80 percent of the current greenhouse gas emissions in the world.

Using my own thoughts and from lessons we discussed in this class in prior weeks like ethics, this was not the most ethical way to gain support for climate change discussions.  And that is not the only other ethical issue at hand.  Was it ethical for these dealings to be made public by WikiLeaks?  That is up for debate.  In my opinion, the country and the world deserves the right to know how its own country does business with allies and other nations across the world.  WikiLeaks took the country by storm in 2010 with details about a bunch of government secrets similar to this issue of the Copenhagen Accord.  What about the ethical issue of the back-channel trades between the United States and others?  Aid for Signatures.  Am I supposed to believe that this doesn’t happen every day between counties in the United Nations?  After learning more about how government works in classes in high school and college, it becomes apparent that trades like these happen a lot in everyday government business whether it is gathering votes for a bill or what have you.  Although I understand its reasoning, I still do not like how the United States was conducting business here.  Sure, trade aid for a signature.  However, don’t threaten the countries for not being willing to be forced into signing something they do not want.  That is where I draw the line.

My diagram is relatively simple. It starts off with countries emitting greenhouse gases, which we know has an effect on the climate. The majority of the emitted gases come from developed countries, like the U.S. because there are more people and more industrialization. People have seen the climate change in recent years and have begun worried as to what to do. People are beginning to realize that action needs to be taken in order for us to reduce our greenhouse emissions and take care of the planet. This is where the government steps in through the UN to see what they can do on their part. The Copenhagen Accord was a proposed plan for countries to take action to lessen their emission of greenhouse gases. Of course, countries who were not emitting many greenhouse gases (island countries) were not for the plan. This is where the U.S. began sending spies and creating bribes in order to get people to support the Accord. The U.S. began to get countries to back them, but not through very honest means. At one point, the U.S. threatened Zenawi to “sign the Accord or discussion ends now.” Through these means and other persuasions, the Copenhagen Accord is now associated with 116 countries. After all of this was said and done, WikiLeaks got a hold of some of the cables that went back and forth between nations and leaked them to the public so they could see what was happening, which brings us to the end of my diagram.

The government seems to have a lot of power when it comes to climate change and the reduction/elimination of greenhouse gas emissions. It is very important that the U.S. government and other world governments take part in discussion on preserving and keeping the earth healthy for our safety and the safety of the future. Whether or not global warming is a real phenomenon or not, we still need to be aware that it is a possibility that we are really hurting the Earth and endangering its inhabitants. Gas emissions are a problem for environmental and physical health and it is something that has to be addressed by the government.Thinking of this, I don’t the way the U.S. government handles climate change diplomacy is appropriate. The U.S. government should take initiative on their own to create policies or programs that aim to reduce emissions rather than bribing and threatening other countries in the way that they did for the Copenhagen Accord. As for the cables being made public, I am glad that they were. I feel like the United States of America is a leading country and we cannot be acting in a fashion that puts a negative light on us in the matter of global climate responsibility. We need to realize the mistakes we have made and move on from them. We should be pushing for creating our own initiatives and being environmental leaders. It’s great that governments are talking about climate change, but real action needs to be taken and we can’t wait around for that any longer. The U.S. needs to make moves – and soon.

chart (please click here to see my diagram; sorry, I couldn’t get it to upload)

1) My diagram shows how the United States negotiated a climate treaty by gathering information from other countries.  Low-carbon models redirects billions of dollars.  The Beijing talks failed to bring about a global deal.  The United States has always been one of the world’s biggest polluter and climate enemy.  The Copenhagen accord could have solved many of the United States problems.  So, the United States needed to get as many countries as possible to go along with the accord.  Money was offered to countries for their support.  There were also other bonuses offered.  Threats were also made to remove some support that countries were already receiving.  The United States used threats to get countries to back the adopting of the Copenhagen accord.  Of course, trust was a big issue.  It wasn’t known if countries would keep their word on what they were promising.  It wasn’t certain that the countries going along with the Copenhagen accord would keep their word to cut emissions.  It also wasn’t certain that the United States would up-hold their promise of the financial and the other aid it promised to these countries for their support.  Also, it couldn’t be guaranteed that the necessary greenhouse gas cuts would be maintained on a global level to avoid dangerous warming.

2) For the purpose of sustainability, governments must do as much as they can to make the public aware of the changes that must be made to protect the earth and its inhabitants.  This must be done on a global scale.  The United States getting involved in this matter on the scale that it has is just what the United States does.  Needing all the countries’ involvement in climate change diplomacy is necessary as each person’s part of the world effects each other person’s part of the world.  I guess the only way to get this done would be to help out financially in the undertaking of projects.  Maybe educating other countries on redirecting their own funds for these corrections would be a possibility but some countries just may not even have the funds to redirect.  Making threats to get things done just doesn’t seem right.  Offering incentives for a countries’ positive actions for climate change diplomacy would be an idea that might keep that country on the right track.  I think it was good that the State Department cables were made public.  The citizens of the United States need to be aware of the actions of the people they put in charge in order to see if change needs to be made.

One of the biggest problems with climate change is that not enough people know about the real threat that it poses. Just in the past 200 years, climate change has become a reality due to the industrial revolution and the burning of fossil fuels creating green house gases. In the last 50 of those years, climate change has begun to be realized by the general population. As this becomes an ever growing threat, especially as we produce 3 tons of carbon emissions every year individually, people need to start reducing their output. The problem is people don’t want to change what they do on a daily basis. There is an added monetary factor to helping the environment that stops people from changing their ways. Due to this people ignore climate change. That is reflected in how the United States government handled the Copenhagen accord talks (this is from what I was able to gather from the document that was very hard to fully understand). In those talks the US paid money to developing countries to get them on their side for the accord that would get the US and larger countries out of their obligations in the Kyoto Protocol. The US would rather pay money for the damage caused so far than to pay money to help stop the problem that will cost a lot more to fix later. Overall smaller countries lose the most as they still will reap the consequences of larger countries and the larger countries will continue to press against the boundaries that make this planet habitable.

The Unites States made a mistake in my mind with the cables. They should’ve have been made public and because they were leaked on Wikileaks the public has benefitted. With these documents the public should realize that the government needs to change their diplomacy. As stated before, as a collective people we need to realize the threat that has been apart of our lives for the past few decades. The government along with everyone else needs to stop putting it off to the side as a smaller problem that can be solved by paying off countries. That money needs to be going towards efforts to halt the process we are in. The planet is very close to the lump we cannot get back from, where life is no longer sustainable. Initiatives like BP has made should be more common around the world and on a larger scale than it has been. The government has its fair share of money problems which I get, but more money should be put towards the sustainability of this earth. As mentioned in the module, cities like New York, LA, and others around the world can be lost if the ocean raises the few feet it is predicted to in the near future. Instead of coal we can use wind power or heat that can be changed into electricity. Something as little as just using public transportation or riding bikes like in Copenhagen can create a large impact if enough people do it. We need to act fast so we have enough time to create a reaction against this force that will push past the planetary boundaries.

The article was quite long, so it was little bit hard to draw diagram for me. So, I tried to draw a big picture and put important and main ideas. Everything was started from greenhouse gas and CO2 emission. As greenhouse gas emission with development of industries, climate has changed. So nations gather together to solve the problem, the first result was Kyoto protocol. Few years later, Copenhagen accord emerged which aim to cut down greenhouse gas. Not every nation agreed with Copenhagen accord especially poorer countries and rapidly growing countries like china. Those countries support Kyoto protocol it is because Kyoto protocol is which rich countries have binding obligations. So this is more favorable for them. For richer nations, at the same time, Copenhagen accord which can prevent to extend the Kyoto protocol need to pass the Copenhagen accord. Therefore US as a rich nation, they need support from nations that opposed to Copenhagen accord to pass the accord. This lead US to spend money secretly for opposed nations. The best example from article is Maldives. Maldives got 50 million dollars for supporting the accord. They even support actively than any other countries from poor countries. The other example is Ethiopia, US threat to Zenawi, Ethiopian prime minister that sign the accord or discussion ends now. So they also supported the accord. US did similar action to other nations and exchange financial aid with support. All this action ended up with 140 countries signed up for the Copenhagen accord.

As we learned from now, climate change is very serious problem. Because climate change is global scale problem, we all need to aware of it and try to solve the problem together. I think that’s why the political action is important like negotiation between countries and make protocol. I think what US did for get a support from other countries was not a good choice. In my opinion, Copenhagen accord which all nations without excepting developing countries and poor countries need to cut off the CO2 emission is better than Kyoto protocol which rich countries have obligation to cut off the CO2 emission. It is because as I said, climate change is global scale issue. All nations need to cooperate to solve the problem. So you might think that I agree with what US have done. But my response is no. US choose wrong way to persuade them. In politics, giving money to other country to get what they want is considered cheating. US cheated for their benefit, and this is from selfishness. This is problem in ethics view. But I can’t blame only US, all this event occurred because all nations take their profit and not considering environmental issue. For example, developing countries are one of the most emissive place because industrial development. This mean they need to cut off the CO2 emission for environment and sustainability. But they support Kyoto protocol since only rich countries obligatorily cut off CO2 emission so that they don’t have to reduce the CO2 emission and keep development. Today, earth already passed some planetary boundaries. All countries in the planet need to cooperate to save the planet.

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.

Due to the use of fossil fuels, there has been a large production of carbon in the atmosphere, causing climate change. As global warming becomes a bigger issue, governments around the world have tried to resolve this by working together and setting limitations. Both the Kyoto Protocol and Copenhagen Accord are examples of this effort, as their aim was to lower carbon. The first option, though, places a binding obligation on rich nations. Developed nations, like the United States of America, dislike this and favor the latter agreement, which allows nations to set reasonable but lower targets for future carbon emissions. Yet, this strategy does not guarantee avoiding dangerous global warming, whereas the other option is more likely to do so. Unfortunately, developed nations, once again like the United States of America, tend to have a larger carbon footprint, while the developing nations are often largely impacted by their actions. Thus, they not like the Copenhagen Accord, especially since they do not have ample financial support to follow through with it. As a result, developed nations offered financial aid to developing nations as a way to bribe them into supporting the Copenhagen Accord.

These main points of the article are shown in exactly this order throughout the diagram. For example, the fossil fuels creating carbon causing climate change is the beginning. This moves onto show that countries working together worked on a political movement, which included the Accord and Protocol, both aiming to lower carbon- a core factor of global warming. The chart shows the difference in how the two methods try to achieve this similar goal and the varying effects of each. Next, it shows how developed nations favor one and the developing nations favor the other because of the gap in the unfair allocation of responsibility for carbon footprints. Lastly, the flow ends with developed nations attempting to convince developing nations otherwise.

As the module explains, climate change threatens crossing the planetary boundary and making the Earth unstable. Therefore, it as a global effort is an important issue. Therefore, the cables should have been publicized because transparency is necessary for global effort; it is important for everyone to work together, as tacky as that sounds. It is hard to claim whether the United States should have been conducting climate change diplomacy in the way that they were. Ethically, I suppose it’s wrong, even if just for their effort to make it a secret. Logically, it seems the most effective unfortunately. It is extremely difficult to have a nation (not only the U.S.) revert from its norm; the country heavily depends on coal, oil, and other polluting sources for energy. Module 9 admits that the increase in our use of fossil fuels during the Industrial Revolution improved our health and wealth. A sudden strict limitation would be hard and may not even work, possibly causing motivation for more secrecy. Also, convincing developing nations to support the Accord seems to have another advantage: aid in finance, which may be beneficial. Ethically, U.S. and others should take full responsibility for their actions and stop further harm, especially since it has had harmful temperature and water shifts. Logically, it will be more possible and effective to attempt to improve their methods and prevent further harm. This logical step would be an attempt to adapt and as the module explains, that could “reduce the amount of harm caused.”

2. In the diagram above I outlined the social and environmental aspects of the cables associated about the Copenhagen Accord. The Copenhagen Accord resulted from the collective action that was the UN Summit on climate change. I explain that through the need of fossil fuels for energy, manufacturing and transportation the amount of greenhouse gas emissions created led to global warming. This global event led to the need for a collective action from the major countries of the world. However, the United States did not agree with some of the ideas presented during the summit which led to some unethical actions on the part of the U.S. The Copenhagen Accord is a collective action the U.S. created to combat fossil fuel usage, greenhouse gas emissions and global warming. The UN wanted to charge the major countries that are responsible for greenhouse gas emissions a large sum of money along with forcing those countries to change their manufacturing practices. The U.S. decided to create the Accord in order to ensure these major changes did not happen by taking a different route. Many countries did not want to support the Accord because they were already supporting the UN’s plan. This led to U.S. officials offering promises of aid from $32 billion from the Accord. When offering this aid didn’t work, the U.S. threatened to cut aid to the countries. The U.S. also used spy tactics to learn more information about each countries involvement with global warming. Eventually most countries that supported the UN bill decided to support the Copenhagen Accord as well which will help reduce greenhouse gas emissions and help the world fight global warming.

3. I agree that a collective action needs to be mitigated in order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and help fight against global warming. The events associated with the Copenhagen Accord led to political boundaries being crossed. I think that many private political conversations should be released at least a few years after the event occur. The leaks of these documents should not have even happened because those documents should have been released by the government. What the leak shows is that the government was trying to cover up the details of how they got support for the Accord. I think that how they received support was not entirely wrong. Although many of the actions were taken in an anthropocentric manner, the actions were partially ecocentric as well. The main purpose of the Accord was to benefit the U.S. so that manufacturing practices would not have to drastically change, but there is still funding associated with the Accord so that countries can lower greenhouse gas emission in the fight against global warming. The threats of cutting aid are not uncommon and are hardly considered unethical anymore as funding cut threats are always used in situations where support needs to be gained. Honestly, if the country that wants the aid isn’t willing to support an economically beneficial plan that also fights global warming, then that country doesn’t deserve funding. The use of spying to discover information is unethical because the U.S. does not have the right to meddle in foreign affairs that aren’t associated with national security. Offer countries aid for their support of the Copenhagen Accord is warranted because that is the real purpose of the Accord. Overall, the U.S. government should have handled the situation without the use of spying, and actually focused on a collective action instead of anthropocentric means of getting the support they wanted.

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2. In my diagram I drew out the main events of the article describing how WikiLeaks demonstrated to the world who is responsible for greenhouse gases. The beginning of my diagram started with the need for energy production because that is how the greenhouse gas was produced. As we learned in this module the excess greenhouse gases in the atmosphere can cause serious issues. Due to this creation of greenhouse gases, there was an increase in climate change. This increase made other powers look at the US for a solution. With such a large increase in climate change the US decided to create the Copenhagen Accord. The Copenhagen Accord was created to mitigate climate change or simply reduce it and its negative affects. Countries outside the US were not big fans of this plan, but they needed the backup of other countries. The US would be unable to get the agreement to pass without other countries’ backing. Unfortunately, the US used extreme measures such as bribery, spying and threats in order to receive outside support. WikiLeaks then leaked all the strategies the US has been using and the public was very dissatisfied. In the end 116 signed the Copenhagen Accord, so in turn it was actually successful. Though the methods were looked down upon, the accord did show the 75% of the countries who signed were responsible for 80% of all greenhouse gases. Even with this success targeted to mitigate climate change, a large amount of political mistrust has been created.

3. I feel the actions taken towards to get the Copenhagen Accord to pass were extremely inappropriate, but not out of the ordinary. There have been many cases on bribery, threats and scandal to pass things in the US. The fact that this plan was aimed towards climate change does not make me as upset by the actions taken. I do believe that it was important for the state department cables to be made public because people should always be aware of the happenings in their country. Though it is important for people to have this knowledge, their ability to act is very limited. The US will use their power to do what they can, even if it is behind the backs of their population. I feel that the US should use different methods when conducting climate change diplomacy because their current methods are created distrust among not only their own people, but other countries as well. Though the intentions of the US are for good, forcing and bribing others to agree is extremely unethical. I also do not like the fact that the US took more benefits than any of the other countries involved. In a way this is the US saying that they are above other countries, so in turn they deserve more of the benefits. Once again I believe that the strategies used by the US were unnecessary. In no way do I think that the end result justifies the US’s actions taken in order to reach it.

2)  The universal problem of Climate Change is a global issue that has a need to be addressed because it is having major negative effects on our world as a whole. To begin my Climate Change Diagram I started with the burning of fossil fuels. Connected to the subject  of Fossil fuels I added another, entitled “Not Sustainable” by this I am referencing to the limited amount of fossil fuels remaining available to us. After the box of Fossil Fuels I next went onto the emission of Green House Gases which is in hand greatly leading to a large negative impact on our atmosphere. This of course is then traveled through to the Climate Change Box. I connected these two boxes especially because greenhouse emissions are directly related to the issue of due to the amount of CO2 being produced and pushed into our atmosphere. From there I finally put in the UN climate change convention. This is a major turning point in the area of climate change, where the Copenhagen Accord was created. From this representatives were able to mitigate for climate change on a global scale. Allow many countries did not want to participate in the accord, the US was able to persuade them using funds to support lesser financially stable countries. By this I mean the US offered aid to countries in need in order to gain support for the Copenhagen Accord. This was a massive step in the correct direction towards a prevention of climate change circumstances.

3) In my opinion I do believe even though it is slightly heavy handed in our manner the way the US was able to almost force the hand of some countries for the Copenhagen Accord it was the right thing to do. I do believe that the methods of withholding aid may have been intense in order to force the hand the topic of climate change is serious and needs to be taken seriously. I personally would have gone along the same path as far as using pressure for the greater good. If we think about the issue on a global scale which obviously it exists every country is responsible for the help to improve the problem. Without help and understanding from the rest of the world we can not make an impact large enough to make a change to the current situation. Although we may have taken into account the opinions of other countries as a valuable resource to improve overall quality of solutions to climate change. Furthermore I am an environmental engineering student who hopes to make a difference in the quality in which we are treating our world. We are only given one world in this lifetime so if we have to force other countries into aiding in the fight to not destroy it, I don’t have a problem with it.

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.

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2. In my diagram, I showed the main points of the Copenhagen Accord and the tactics that the United States uses to gain the support of other opposing countries. At the beginning of the system diagram, it shows that the climate change starts the whole thing. The increase in climate change causes the Copenhagen Accord to come about which is a plan to decrease the greenhouse gasses emitted. In order for the Copenhagen Accord to be put into effect, the United States needed to gain the support of many different countries. The United States did this by unethical means. In order to get the support of the smaller, island countries like the Maldives, the United States bribed them with large payments and the countries accepted these bribes because the climate change affected them the most and they needed help. Another tactic used was to threaten the opposing country. For example, Ethiopia was initially against joining the Accord and having United States aid them, but the US sent them a confidential cable saying to “sign the accord or discussion ends now”. Ethiopia realized the threat and accepted to join the Accord if President Barack Obama personally assured that they will receive their aid money. For the larger, more opposing countries, the United States used confidential cables find information on the opposing countries. After all of this is done, the Copenhagen Accord was supported by 75% of the countries in the United Nations. Having the support of the majority of the countries could lead to the improvement of the climate, which is the endpoint of my system diagram.

3. I believe that the cables should have been made public because the people have the right to know what is being done to try and help the environment. I think that the more people that know about it the more of a collective action it would become. If fixing the change in climate becomes a collective action, the more people would be trying to fix the problem so it would be more affective. Also, I believe that the governments should partly base their decisions about fixing the climate change on the thoughts of the majority of the people. I do not agree with some of the methods that the United States used to gain the support of the opposing countries, but I cannot say that it did not work. Although it was unethical, the United States gained the support of over 116 countries in the United Nations and there are more that are going to join. With the support of all of these countries, the Copenhagen Accord can be put into effect and the climate change would decrease by reducing the greenhouse gas emission. The United States had good intentions when trying to gain support, but the methods were complete unethical propaganda. Other methods could have been implemented like honest negotiations when trying to gain the support of opposing countries. The United States should have tried change the opinion of opposing countries by educating them on the danger we are getting ourselves into and making them genuinely want to help the environment instead of being forced to or being bribed.

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2. In my system diagram, I wanted to show the relationship between climate change and WikiLeaks cables. I started off by showing some main contributing factors of climate change, which we know as Greenhouse Gases and the use of Fossil Fuels. Because the talk of climate change has become such a major issue in these recent decades, the Copenhagen Accord was created. Climate change is starting to show its effects on certain parts of the Earth. For example, ice caps are melting and the sea level is rising. The United States agrees with this Copenhagen Accord idea, so they go to seek allies in support of this action.Being that the Copenhagen Accord really benefited the United States, action was taken in order to get other countries to agree with this method. Some unethical methods, such as bribery and cyber attacks, were used against other countries which ended up forcing them to sign on to the agreement. Perhaps some challenges will arise in the future, but only time will tell. I can, however, definitely see that happening being that some of the ‘forced’ agreeing countries might rise up against the accord some time down the road. In the end, there were many countries who did not agree with the dishonesty of the United States, but 116 countries signed on and an additional 26 agreed in the end. Even though the countries were manipulated into signing this agreement, one can state that the Copenhagen Accord was successful in reaching its goal of having such a large amount of agreements.
3. When it comes to my own personal opinion, I certainly have a dead set point on the cables and climate change diplomacy. The cables should definitely be made public. It is the right of the human body to be able to observe and attain such knowledge. The United States is always concerned about the money and getting the better end of a deal. With that being known, it concludes in the overall goal of a project (such as the Copenhagen Accord) to be lost. The goal is to eventually slow down or stop the change of the climate with the census of countries around the world. The United State is obsessed with the fact that they need the POWER when inn fact they need to worry about their STATUS. Giving a bad name by manipulating other countries to agree with such accord is not a way of gaining a higher global status. Even if the act was incorrect, of releasing the State Department Cables, we can only embrace how it was done and hope for a better outcome in time. The cables showed the blunt truth as to what the exact negative impacts are of greenhouse gas emissions and burning of fossil fuels. This should have been done in a less aggressive manner by the United States. The whole truth should have been made aware and nothing should have been left off of the grid to anyone. Secrets are never a good way to get anywhere, especially in politics.

2. My diagram focused on the main events in the article to improve the climate. Such as climate change, the negotiating climate treaty, the United States paying for allies, and the result of the       166 countries associating with the accord. Greenhouse gases which cases global warming, is gas compounds in the atmosphere that absorbs infrared energy. The United States then wanted to re-engineer the global economy. In result of climate change a negotiation climate change treaty was created between the United States and allies. This was then called the Copenhagen Accord. The Accord assured thirty billion dollars to the poverty nations in aid to the global warming that they had not caused. This aid helped that United States gain support and allies from other countries. However, another concern was if they U.S.’s aid would be in cash. Also, another issue with finance is that countries will keep their word with improving climate change. However, the U.S. threatened Zenawi. They stated that they sign the accord or the discussion ended. Zenawi responded back that Ethiopia was in support, but there was concern that the assurance of the aid was not being respected. Currently, 116 countries are associated with the accord and twenty-six countries intend to have association with the accord.

3.I think that we have the right to see these documents. However, it tends to make the United States look bad. The reason is because they are trying to do the right thing but in the wrong manner. I think that it is important for the public to see this for many reasons. The government should be ran by the people, so it is important for the public to see the cables in order to gage whether it is right or not. If there is an outcry then the government should cease that way of doing things. It is very important for the United States to attack global warming because it is a leader country. If the Unites States can use diplomatic strategies in order to combat global warming. Global warming is not something that is caused by one single nation but rather several developed nations, which is why you need several countries to participate. I think that the Unites States should go about things differently to those countries that oppose the fight for a greener planet. The United Sates should combine with other nations in developing ways like machinery, business plans and other things that require greener actions. The countries that do not want to hop on bored will be forced to conform to the global warming fight or it will hurt their economy if they do not.

The diagram I have made depicts how the United States manipulated various countries into signing the Copenhagen Accord. Although it was not necessarily in their best interest for these various countries to sign the Accord, political pressure from the United States made opposition to the Accord incredibly difficult to maintain. The diagram begins in the upper left hand corner with climate change as the first step. Current fosil fuel usage and unsustainable economic, political, and societal practices have increased the temperature of the planet, which shows signs of incredibly deleterious effects on the planet. Climate change is recognized by the entire world, which is highlighted in the next box. A Copenhagen Accord is then drafted in order to promote more sustainable practices, reduce the use of unsustainable practices, and promise aid to countries who would be severely damaged by climate change. In the next box, the United States promise to provide aid to countries severely damaged, in accordance with the Copenhagen Accord. This box then links to two other boxes, one of them being the total number of countries who signed the Accord. Some countries signed the document just by the promise given by the United States. However, the former box is also connected with another box which highlights the United States manipulation of different countries to gain votes. In one box, the United States uses threats the to force different countries to sign the Accord. In another box, the United States bribes other countries with aid, and funding for various “projects” that the countries require. Both these boxes points to the final box which highlights the 140 out of a total of 193 countries that signed the Copenhagen Accord.

In order to combat climate change, there needs to be serious collective action on mitigation from every single country from around the world. Because every single country is contributing to climate change, every single country needs to reform their unsustainable practices to reduce the emission of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, and find alternative energy sources that would not significantly affect the climate. Of course, different countries contribute to the issue in different ways, like the United States being the largest contributor to climate change whereas a small island country would not, but regardless every country needs to contribute. Collective action needs treaties like the Copenhagen Accord to very strictly change the way countries behave, but they need to be written to maximize the reduction of climate change. I believe what the United States did is highly unethical, where the Accord was definitely not agreed upon by other countries, whether or not for strictly political reasons or that the Accord did not combat climate change whether enough. But regardless, political manipulation by the United States was not done to reduce climate change, but to harm other powerful countries and make the United States more powerful. This practice is therefore highly unethical, as manipulation was conducted under a guise instead of actually promoting some positive change. I believe that the cables should definitely be made public, beforehand and afterwards. Ideally there should not be any secret discourse about climate change issues where countries can actually harm negotiations, deals, and political and economic progress.

My diagram describes the events that led to the creation of the Copenhagen Accord and the effects of the accord. The creation of the Copenhagen Accord started because of the great amount of fossil fuels being burned all across the world. The burning of these fossil fuels put out an excessive amount of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. These greenhouse gases then created climate change and were leading to global warming problems. Global warming is a global problem that is very difficult to reverse which is why each country needed to be a part of the change to actually make a difference and slow it down. Many countries were being difficult with agreeing to negotiations which is why the Copenhagen Accord was created. The Copenhagen Accord was created to get the other countries to agree to actions to fight global warming by lowering greenhouse gas emissions. The accord would make bigger, faster growing countries bound to certain rules. However, the accord threatens the UN negotiations with the richer countries.These threats have made many countries object the accord and that is where the US ran into problems.  To get these other countries to agree the US bribed and manipulated them by offering money to the poorest nations effected by global warming. There was also a distrust that countries would not keep there word. There were many countries on the fence after all this dishonesty and manipulation from the US but 116 countries ended up agreeing with the accord. 26 other countries have agreed to associate themselves with the accord.

I think that the cables should be made public so there isn’t so much of an outcry after they are leaked. I also think that climate change and global warming isn’t taken as seriously as it should be. The whole world must work together to fight global warming because the efforts of a single country will not mean anything if many other countries continue their lives normally. When a large country like China is bound to the same rules as a smaller, poorer country there isn’t going to be a change. China is a huge country with many people and industrial areas and as it keeps growing and industrializing itself there will be much more greenhouse emissions created. China needs to have stricter rules binding it to fight against greenhouse gas emissions so that we actually have a chance against global warming. However, smaller countries also need to have strict binding rules and keep up with their end of the deal. Honestly, although it was wrong, I don’t think if the US hadn’t manipulated the other countries that anything would’ve been agreed to. Money talks and if the poorer countries hadn’t been offered/bribed money they probably still would never agreed to the accord. The US has created unnecessary distrust by this method but other countries need to be more acceptable to ideas that are for the greater good of the future. In the future the US should think more about international relations before it manipulates other countries.

Although the Wikileaks article is slightly outdated being published in 2010, the issue is still at hand. Many countries are in collaboration to come up with solutions for greenhouse gases caused by man-made Co2 emissions. Nearly every single country produces greenhouse gases and many at dangerous levels for example, US and China being the biggest. Organizations such as the Copenhagen Accord work together with multiple countries to create agreeable plans that each country is then to carry out in order to combat climate change by reducing emissions. Referring to my diagram, I listed the sequence of events leading up to countries taking action to correct global climate change. Political figures have been aware of the concept of climate change for many years but have not taken action until recently when the effects are actually showing. Populations are steadily increasing in the world which require more resources to facilitate which generally leads to more pollution due to the manufacturing of goods. Countries such as China have so much packed into a  limited amount of space which has lead to the state they are in today with air quality at an all time low. It is important that countries take responsibility for their contribution to the global issue. Support from certain countries still do not comply to reducing emissions. As for other countries, some do not have the financial standing to sufficiently support the cause. In cases such as that it is up to the coalition of other richer countries to take care of the global environment.

I do believe that the State Department cable should have been made public. We all live on this planet and we all have the right to know what steps are being taken to protect it. The United States should definitely work in conjunction with other countries regarding Climate Change to help financially support third world countries who are being affected but cannot financially help towards the cause. This is a world wide issue and should be a world wide topic to work on resolving together regardless of finances; this effects everyone. Many people disregard global warming but scientist have proven many times that our climate is changing. You can tell by the past few years, mild winters in the north while the south gets slammed with snow?; Climate Change. This is something that should not be taken lightly and is a topic that can no longer be avoided. We need to act now and fast before it is to late. The government should be involved but with the knowledge of scientist leading their decisions. Stricter laws should be set forth for factories that produce a large amount of pollution, oil spills should be nonexistent and if an oil spill does occur there should be stricter repercussions for the perpetrators. Climate change is something we need to stop running from and start getting ahead of.

In my diagram I aim to show the entire process which led to the events we read about for this exercise. We first start with continued use of fossil fuels which has caused an increase in the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. As we know, an excess of these gases inevitably leads to an altered atmosphere in the Earth resulting in a more erratic climate thusly named climate change. Since climate change inherently affects all of the people on Earth, it has caused political action to be taken. This leads to the UN climate convention which aims to raise concerns and ideas which all of the countries that belong to it to start taking action to reduce the carbon footprint in the atmosphere. This leads directly to the Copenhagen accord which was aimed to create an agreement to lower the greenhouse gas use in many countries. Unfortunately, this agreement highly benefited one country, the US, unsurprisingly. But they could not simply just take all action on their own and get the agreement to pass, they needed other countries’ support. Many did not agree with it, so the US resorted to using unethical tactics such as bribery, espionage, cyberattacks and the like to force many of these countries to sign the agreement against their will. They managed to get 146 to sign it, so in a way the goal for the Copenhagen accord was successful, but with the consequence that it fostered a political climate of hostility and mistrust among those involved.

Regarding this topic, I am inclined to give a pass to any action necessary to have any means necessary be taken in order to successfully carry out an agreement which would eventually end in lessened greenhouse gases. This is an incredibly essential topic that others need to comply for the benefit of all, although I don’t really like that the US took more benefits than the rest of them regarding who receives the most benefits. This should be taken for the good of the planet. I do agree that these documents should have been released, us as citizens of this world have a right to know what goes on in it and websites such as WikiLeaks and people like Snowden should be welcomed for the actions they take/took. It is incredibly useful for others to know that the US has been involved in very shady forms of actions because I think most in our country live in this bubble where they pretend that we are somehow superior morally to others when we are responsible for many other problems we face in the world today. We should be conducting climate change diplomacy in a way that there are no obvious beneficiaries to it, but at the same time it must be strict enough that others have to comply with it and go against their best monetary interests. Which is hard to do when fossil fuels are among the most important item in your economy. Countries should propose to all invest in scientific research and technological development for sustainable energies. I think we have not taken as strong of an approach as we could possibly take, both internally and internationally.

This system diagram focuses on all the dealings that the United States were found to be guilty of. To the left, you can see influences that were documented in the cables that were exposed through wikileaks. First, Connie Hedegaard, who is the EU climate action commissioner, suggested to the US deputy climate change envoy, Jonathan Pershing, that small island counties could be used as allies towards the accord. This was due to their low economic prosperity and great need for aid to their country. Next, Saudi Arabia is documented with trying to form a deal with the US for support of the accord. Since they are the second biggest oil producer in the world, they ask for help diversifying their economy away from fossil fuels. They would then stop resisting any negotiations regarding climate change. Then my diagram shows how the US acted based on the information found in the cables. One of the cables provided detail into discussions between Maldives and the US. It showed that Maldives asked for “tangible assistance” for support of the accord, and that this would lead other small countries to do so as well. Lastly, the United States blatantly issued a threat to Ethiopian prime minister, Meles Zenawi, that they need to, “sign the accord or discussion ends now”. They responded with concerns of promises of the aid. All of these things lead to there being less climate change for the planet. The US is trying to get this accord to be passed in hopes of going around the Kyoto protocol which would bind rich nations to their obligations for climate change. This would give the government free reign to hand the issue as they feel, and not as a planet which is how the situation needs to be handled.

I completely agree with cables being leaked to the public. Everyone has a right to know what the dealings are going on behind closed doors about what is to be done to save our planet. The US only thinks about money and how this will affect the money coming into our country, and not about the actual state of the planet. All of the actions carried out by these countries shows that the problem of climate change and global warming will not be simply solved by the governing powers who should be taking responsibility for the state of planet as it currently is. If any change is to happen, it needs to happen with a complete change of attitude across the entire world towards a more cooperative and dynamic approach to climate change. It cannot be just the governments, but the people that reside in those countries, need to take it upon themselves to do what they can for the planet. The high power governments will do whatever they need to to keep power where they want and that has everything to do with climate change. It is a global problem, and instead of trying to fix the problem, the US is using this as an opportunity to gain control and leverage over the disadvantaged counties of the world. Like it was said in the TEDtalk, a complete change of attitude and outlook needs to happen at both the personal and political level. There needs to be a shift from doing whats best for ourselves to what is best for the planet that we all live on. If this does not happen, I fear for what could happen.

Based off of the diagram that I created from the information supplied in the article, WikiLeaks cables reveal how US manipulated climate accord, there are many different core ideas shown within. To begin, my systems diagram shows that the main issue stemming from greenhouse gas emissions is global warming. This issue lead to the desire of many nations to create negotiations for a climate change treaty. This treaty would include different agreements that would change the way in which climate change progresses and is impacting the world in which we live in. This would include the flow of billions of dollars to be redirected into the direction of climate control This desire to create a treaty led to the creation of the Copenhagen Accord Plan. This was an unofficial document that had emerged form the Copenhagen climate change summit in the later months of 2009. From this plan, the United States attempted to find allied countries to help out with there purpose. They attempted to find as many countries as they could to associate themselves with the accord and then eventually support it. This would immensely boost the possibility of this plan being adopted and being put into place. But in order to get these countries support the United States stopped at nothing to get the support of these countries. They used money, spying, threats and promises of aid to get their strongly desired support for the Copenhagen accord. Following this they eventually got 116 countries have associated themselves with the accord and then 26 countries to say they intended to associate as well.

Since the introduction of the steam engine and the introduction of more high quality machinery in the Industrial Revolution the human race has been burning fossil fuels like it was their job to do so. This ultimately changed the concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and has changed the world for the worse since then. This pressing issue has led to much debate since the solution of the problem would require the support and action of all countries and people in the world. This exact problem is the reason in which the United States of America created the Copenhagen accord plan. Which was a plan created to reduce the creation of the greenhouse gas affect by mandating action by all countries supporting it and who fell into the jurisdiction of it, to comply and put into action supporting actions that would lower the greenhouse gas affect on the environment. In order to get this accord officially adopted the United States went out of their way with immoral practices and strategies. Thus resulting from this the United State produced the State Department Cables that were then made public. I believe that this act was not justified or correct because it leads to other countries not trusting us in what we do or say we are going to do. Although I believe that it was incorrect for us to do this I believe that it was good in some ways. For example it showed the citizens of our country the ultimate negative impacts of the emission of greenhouse gases and thus the result in climate change.

First, my diagram begins with the fact that we are overusing fossil fuel, which lead to a climate change that was not good for our environment.  Since the climate change affects the world as a whole, countries met at the Copenhagen climate change summit to try and solve this problem.  Throughout the meeting, the Copenhagen Accord was formed.  By this, it was stated that each country had to take responsibility for the overuse of fossil fuels and try implementing steps to help the environment and the climate change problem.  However, there was a split about who supported this and who did not.  In my diagram, I split the United States and United Nations into two separate boxes because the United States supported the Copenhagen Accord whereas the United Nations did not.  Since the United Nations did not support this, the United States tried to take matters into their own hands in an unethical way.  The sent treats, had secret cables between countries, and ended up financially bribing countries because they claimed they did not have the money for this type of project.  With all of these combined and a lot of push from the United States, 140 countries ended up signing on and supporting the Copenhagen Accord, which was the last part of my diagram.  The main idea behind my concept map was to keep the ideas simple but to show the reader the cause of the Copenhagen Accord and how the United States finally got a lot of countries to agree with it.

Honestly, I think what the State Department did was very unethical.  Just because certain countries do not want to sign on to an idea that one fully supports does not mean one should threaten and bribe them to get their way.  However, the climate change is a big problem for the world as a whole.  If we continue our detrimental ways, we are going to disrupt planetary boundaries and change out environment for the worst.  Since human life started when the Earth was stable, changing the stability is going to change the way people develop too.  Even though I think what the United State did was wrong, I think their overall goal of having a sustainable Earth is a goal that the whole world should have.  I believe that they could have done this in another way besides brides and threats, however, the outcome was good because now countries are being more Earth-friendly.  Instead of releasing the cables to the public, I feel that the United States should have come out and told us citizens their plans so that people do not feel betrayed by their government.  Since there is a positive outcome though, I do not think people should still be bitter about the whole thing.  Now, people all over the world are more educated on ways to help the environment, like taking public transportation, implementing carbon offsetting, and buying more organic plant-based foods.  Since the world agrees we need to change some of our habits to help save the environment, I think it is important that we all continue to be educated about fossil fuels and how to help with the climate change.

The idea behind my diagram is as follows. Greenhouse gases and emissions are outlined in red for the obvious reason of them being harmful to the environment. The presence of greenhouse gases lead to “climate change”. Due to this “climate change”, it leads to the world to get together and discuss a plan to appropriately and effectively slowing down or decreasing greenhouse gases and emissions to in turn decrease the “climate change”. The United States are brought into the equation because they support the plan that was discussed during the Copenhagen Accord, but due to differences in political views, not every country in the world agrees, particularly the poorer countries that are a part of the United Nations. Which leads to the U.S. taking the necessary steps to swing votes in favor of the Copenhagen Accord. Upon spying and attempts of spying on countries that are a part of the United Nations, the United States targeted the countries the felt were in most need of financial support in order to further persuade them to come to terms with the Copenhagen Accord. Wikileaks later reveal that the United States pulled these “stunts” if you will and expose the United States for essentially bribing underdeveloped and poorer countries in order to get them to vote in favor of the Copenhagen Accord. In the end 116 countries in favor of the accord and 26 other countries intending to be in favor of the accord. And, Japan opted out of an extension of the Kyoto climate treaty in order to join sides with the Accord.

I believe the steps the United States took in order to accomplish their goals are completely acceptable. Politics are a dirty game and they always have been. The country that sits there and is complacent is never going to accomplish anything and they certainly are not going to get things to happen the way by which they want them to. This comes back to the ethics discussion from module three. The United States followed a path of action ethics, where the end goal of getting the remaining countries on board to support the plan by which they believed had the best chance of slowing down climate change was in fact more important than the consequences of the actions needed in order to achieve this. They steps in which they took may seem intrusive or as though they have overstepped boundaries, but just because there were wikileaks of evidence against the United States making attempts to spy on countries and negotiate with them, does not mean that they were the only country doing it. They also are not the first country to do it and will not be the last country to do it. The State Department cables should not have been released to the public for the exact reason of negative and ignorant criticism of the course of action taken by the United States. A job needed to be done and the United States took action in order to complete that job, the “climate change” is not going to disappear or lessen unless somebody steps up to the plate and makes an attempt to limit the greenhouse gases and emissions worldwide.

This system diagram begins with climate change which is a growing environmental issue. The leaders of many of the nations around the world are aware of this and are trying to collectively take action to reduce the emission of greenhouse gases. They do this by meeting at the Copenhagen Climate Change Summit and creating the Copenhagen Accord. The goal of this accord was to create ways for each country to cut greenhouse gas emission. It also planned to give aid to the poor countries that were affected by this. Not all the countries agreed on this accord and the U.S. wanted it to gain support because it serves their interests. The U.S. then provided massive amounts of financial aid to affected countries that they also threatened and spied on to get them to back the accord. This is what WikiLeaks discovered and exposed on the internet. These actions lead to mistrust from many nations even though they would continue supporting the Copenhagen Accord.  With this support from the other nations they 140 countries aligned with the accord allowing action to be taken on it. What the U.S. did here was by no means the right thing to do, but the result is that there will be significantly less greenhouse gas emission and action will be taken on the issue of climate change. Although the spying and threatening is not good, I think the ends justified the means in this case and now the world can make an effort to act on climate change.

I think climate change needs to be getting more attention from world leaders, so I like how they are meeting to discuss the matter. I also believe that countries need to start taking action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and I would agree with the Copenhagen Accord. Climate change has been recognized by many as the most important problem in the world today, but it has taken a while to see any action taken. The U.S. wanted to prompt other countries to take action because it is a collective action problem that can’t be resolved by any one country. They did do some spying and threatening to other nations that has led to mistrust, but it was for a good purpose. Since climate change is one of the biggest problems in the world today, I think the end result justifies the means taken to get there. The Copenhagen Accord is a huge step toward solving this problem and ending mitigation from countries and I believe this justifies the spying and threatening they did to get there. As for the cables being made public, this I do not agree with. It is sometimes important to be aware of the actions of our nation, but there is a lot the people don’t know and it is usually for the right reasons. The release of these cables took a lot of attention away from climate change which is hurtful in solving the problem. If this was kept secret, I think countries would be more focused at the real problem of climate change.

My diagram is very simple and it shows how our burning of fossil fuels has lead to change in how we produce pollution. I started the diagram with fossil fuels considering it is the core of everything that has happened. They are very useful considering the amount of energy that can be produced from them but they also create a lot of pollution that hurts our atmosphere. That burning is the main cause of global warming along with other gases such as CFCs. Global warming is causing the Earth to heat up which is then leading to climate change around the world. Climate change has been written about and noticed for awhile but only massive changes have been made recently worldwide. One of these proposed changes was the Copenhagen Accord. It was created to help to environment but it failed initially because it was made to help solve a lot of the United States’ problems. It was also shut down do to many smaller countries feeling that the Accord wasn’t helping them, only larger countries. The United States eventually bribed the smaller countries into agreeing with the act so that as many countries as possible would sign it. As of today, 140 countries have signed the act and it has been successful.

I think that it’s important that the United States cables were made public. It’s embarrassing for the country’s reputation that we were caught attempting to spy but I think it’s important that the world knows when things like this happens. I don’t think that the United States should have done the things that they did but in the long run it is beneficial for a lot of countries to sign an act like this for the good of the world.  I think that countries should be able to do what they want to do in terms of how they run their country but at the same time I think that everyone should be forced to comply with things that will benefit the entire earth. As long as everyone contributes a proportional amount of course. One of the negative results of this sneaky behavior is losing trust between other countries which could prove to be problematic in the future. What should have been done is propose a proposition where every country tries to contribute as much as they can to protecting the environment. Have the larger more developed countries put more effort into being more environmentally friendly since they have the resources and give the smaller countries more slack so that they can become more developed.

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2)  The way my diagrams flows, is that it starts from the left with greenhouse gases, then continues to the right, moves downwards, and then moves towards the left again. It first starts with the reason behind the meeting for the Copenhagen Climate Change Summit in 2009 that established the Copenhagen Accord which I describe next in my diagram. The Accord didn’t promise any greenhouse gas cuts, which many countries that didn’t support the accord were probably able to see. However, following through the diagram, the U.S. needed the accord to pass to solve their own issues. I then made an arrow showing that the U.S. made progress in the end due to help from Japan when they decided not to support another reform, the Kyoto Climate Change Treaty. I wanted to contrast progress with no progress, so I put a box coming off of greenhouse gases to show that no progress was made in relation to trying to reduce greenhouse gases and climate change. This contrasted with the progress the U.S. made. In my diagram, I also described the malicious acts the U.S. carried out such as sending threats to other countries, cutting off aid, and hacking into computers. The arrows are used to keep the flow of the story moving, or show what the actions from the previous box before led to. Overall, my diagram describes the research from the article in a simpler way that you could read through my diagram and understand what happened with the cable leaks instead of reading through the whole article.

3) Normally I would say that information that is supposed to be kept private should be, but in this case I think it was good that the cables were released because we got to see how  mischievous the U.S.  was in trying to get countries to agree with the Accord. The U.S. was being selfish, instead of altruistic, in only caring that some of our countries problems were solved. The U.S. was being especially selfish because the Accord really wasn’t helping climate change, and that was the overall point of the meeting. The U.S. should in no way try to get other countries to be on our side by using tactics such as threats or illegally hacking into computers. The U.S. might have been able to get what they want from that, but in the future if the U.S. needed those countries they threatened to be on our side, the countries would have no respect for the U.S. The U.S. should’ve instead tried to suggest that the UN should have another meeting to revise the accord and change it to where it would actually cause a positive impact on the environment through mitigation efforts. The U.S. actions have no doubt only gained us enemies, distrust, and soon we will have to make adaptation efforts from the impacts of climate change that will continue to occur. It seems like the U.S. was trying to make it look like they were doing something similar to the collective action problem represented in this module. They wanted to make it look like they wanted to help with climate change, when really though they’re actions they showed more of a concern for, “individual interest to keep emitting” things into the environment such as greenhouse gases.

My diagram represents the Unites States unethical way to try and decrease the global carbon foot. The Copenhagen Accord relates directly to the huge impact of fossil fuels and our reliance on them. My diagram starts by showing how fossil fuels cause green house gases, thus causing negative climate change. This change needs action, which is where the Copenhagen Accord comes into play. However, the United States lacked the support needed for action to take place. Realizing how dire the issue is and how America could profit off it, the people in charge turned to dirty politics. By bribing, spying, and threatening other countries, USA eventually got 146 countries to sign on and 26 more with the intention of joining. The accord is designed to move decrease countries green house gas rates, and slow the rate of climate change. Although the accord technically intends to help reduce pollution on our earth, the way of gaining support was unethical. America spent absurd amounts of tax-payer money during this process when the information was leaked and the countries demanded money. However, this was done without the knowledge and support of the American people. Also, even though climate change was the intention of the accord, the United States were well aware that if they got this passed the flow of billions of dollars would be redistributed. Thus, becoming a profit for our economy. The leaking of the documents was a nation wide embarrassment and frightening that our government is playing dirty without us knowing.

I think that the United States government is wrong for playing dirty and bribing countries around the world. Even though they needed support quickly and the issue is very important and impacts the whole world, I wonder why the Accord was not supported in the first place. If the rest of the world didn’t think it was a good idea it should have been altered and fixed, not lobbied into existence. However, it happened so I hope that change actually happens. I hope that big fossil fuel companies that drive our economies don’t have secretive information as well, and the whole thing was a way to get money for America. I would love to see the world all coming together to realize the severity of global warming and how quickly it’s approaching. These countries have the power to make positive changes and hopefully that begins to happen. The scams that America was doing shouldn’t have been made public, because they shouldn’t have happened at all. The political integrity that American citizens rely on was let down. Thus, if they were public America and rest of the world would be outraged and it wouldn’t have worked. Although, the accord, or another plan still might not be supported as of now if the bribing wasn’t done, I still morally believe it was wrong. It is scary to see the most powerful people in the world abusing their rights. It makes me think what else they could do, or what else secretive is happening right now that we aren’t aware of.

Through the use of my diagram, I illustrated how the burning of fossil fuels can have an impact on many things throughout the world. Since our world is so dependent on the industry and the burning of fossil fuels, there has been a significant increase in the emission of greenhouse into the atmosphere. Due to the increase in greenhouse gases, there has been a great climate change as well. As humans have become more intelligent over the years, there has been notice taken to the severity of our impact on the planet with the emission of greenhouse gasses. Therefore there has been many plans to try and mitigate greenhouse gases to solve the crisis of climate change. Through the efforts of the leaders of the world, the United Nations became involved which lead to the creation of the Copenhagen accord. The accord was created to gather a plan from each country on how they would mitigate greenhouse gas emission into the atmosphere. This accord benefits the United States in many ways so the United States spied on leaders of the United Nations to get more information. Through these efforts, the United States blackmailed and bribed poorer countries to agree with the accord even though they had not caused any of the greenhouse gas emissions or climate change. Soon their efforts became validated and the other countries were all on board with the accord. Through the raised support of other countries, the accord was adopted and the mitigation of greenhouse gases began.

When thinking about the different things the United States did to try and get the Copenhagen accord to become adopted, the measures the United States will take is clear. The United States held a great interest in many of its allies supporting the accord it created in order to save the environment from greenhouse gases. I think that the American people have a right to see the measures that the United States took in order to get what they wanted accomplished. Many citizens already have an idea of just how sneaky their government can be when they want something to be done. The release of the information just validates that point greatly. While the United States should not have used blackmail and bribery to achieve their goal, it did help the process of convincing the leaders of the world to support the accord. The United States realized there was a problem with human sustainability on earth and that there has to be more actions they need to take in order to solve the problem. Since climate change impacts the entire world, the world population must take action collectively with similar plans instead of individually. One country can not solve the climate change for the whole world. The leaders of the world have to work together to make sure that life is still sustainable on earth. Instead of bribing the poorer countries to get on board with the accord, the United States could have recognized the fact that the poorer countries are trying to develop themselves so that they can have a better quality of life than they already have. Those efforts would have been more honest and caused less of a fuss than blackmail and bribery.