Wikileaks cables reveal how US manipulated climate accordEmbassy dispatches show America used spying, threats and promises of aid
The Guardian: The US diplomatic cables reveal how the US seeks dirt on nations opposed to its approach to tacking global warming; how financial and other aid is used to gain political backing; how distrust, broken promises and creative accounting dog negotiations; and how the US mounted a secret global diplomatic offensive to overwhelm opposition to the controversial 'Copenhagen accord,' the unofficial document that emerged from the ruins of the Copenhagen climate change summit in 2009.
Negotiating a climate treaty is a high-stakes game, not just because of the danger warming poses to civilisation but also because re-engineering the global economy to a low-carbon model will see the flow of billions of dollars redirected...
The US state department sent a secret cable on 31 July 2009 seeking human intelligence from UN diplomats across a range of issues, including climate change. The request originated with the CIA... Diplomats were asked to provide evidence of UN environmental 'treaty circumvention' and deals between nations...
The Copenhagen accord, hammered out in the dying hours but not adopted into the UN process, offered to solve many of the US's problems... The accord cannot guarantee the global greenhouse gas cuts needed to avoid dangerous warming. Furthermore, it threatens to circumvent the UN's negotiations on extending the Kyoto protocol, in which rich nations have binding obligations. Those objections have led many countries -- particularly the poorest and most vulnerable -- to vehemently oppose the accord...
Along with finance, another treacherous issue in the global climate negotiations, currently continuing in Cancún, Mexico, is trust that countries will keep their word... Trust is in short supply on both sides of the developed-developing nation divide...
At the mid-point of the major UN climate change negotiations in Cancún... the biggest shock has been Japan's announcement that it will not support an extension of the existing Kyoto climate treaty. That gives a huge boost to the accord. US diplomatic wheeling and dealing may, it seems, be bearing fruit.
