The U.S. has actively bribed other members of the international community to gain support for the Copenhagen Accords, a non-binding climate change treaty that allows each country to set its own emissions targets, according to secret diplomatic cables released by Wikileaks.

Environmentalists criticize the accord for being toothless and lulling the world into a false sense of security over the real danger of climate change. So, if the Copenhagen Accords are not robust legal documents, why would the U.S. so wholeheartedly back it? Follow the money.

The creation of a low emissions economy means that billions, if not trillions, of dollars are going to be redirected to “green energy” in the coming decades. Any country that is seen as an environmental leader will have the moral authority to direct the flows of those funds. It is possible that, at Copenhagen, America was motivated by two types of green – environmentalism and the almighty dollar.

In order to gain additional supporters for the Copenhagen Accords, the U.S. dangled the promise of additional aid money in front of tiny countries, such as the Maldives. A Wikileaks cable revealed that the Maldives was willing to support the U.S. after they were promised $50 million in additional aid to protect themselves from rising sea levels. This led to a blanket order in the U.S. diplomatic community to court other AOSIS (Alliance of Small Island States) countries because “given their need for financing” they “could be our best allies.”

And the money goes both ways. Countries who refused to support the Copenhagen Accords found their aid budgets slashed. Another Wikileaks cable exposed U.S. plans to “neutralize, co-opt or marginalize” countries, such as Ecuador and Bolivia, that refused to support the Copenhagen Accords. While the U.S. denies that there is any linkage between climate change talks and aid budget cuts, the Bolivian ambassador to the UN was more forthcoming: “One thing that I can say for sure is they cut aid to Bolivia and to Ecuador. That is a fact. And they said it very clearly: ‘We’re going to cut it, because you don’t support the Copenhagen Accord.’ And that is blackmail.”

If one believes the critics of the Copenhagen Accords, the non-binding agreement is nothing more than an ineffectual stopgap that will lull the international community into forgetting about the dangers of climate change just long enough for the U.S. to grab the reigns of a new low-emissions economy and enrich itself at the expense of climate disaster elsewhere.

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