Among the revelations: the U.S. State Department, acting on a request from the Central Intelligence Agency, ordered American diplomats to spy on officials and governments. The American regime was seeking compromising information, Internet passwords, credit-card numbers, DNA and biometric data, evidence of non-cooperation with international climate decrees, and much more. The cables also show U.S. and European Union officials discussing and using bribery and blackmail to get poorer regimes to sign on to the COP15 climate deal in Copenhagen.
The leaked diplomatic documents, which were publicized during the United Nations COP16 global-warming summit in Cancun, have caused a severe backlash against the tactics and negotiations among media outlets worldwide — on all sides of the debate. From statist publications and governments to talk-radio personalities and climate-change “skeptics,” everybody is seizing on the revelations. Except, of course, the embarrassed governments that were exposed.
The U.S. government, for example, has offered a series of “no comment” proclamations and strong condemnation for WikiLeaks. EU climate boss Connie Hedegaard, who was quoted in a cable as saying that poor small-island states could be good “climate” allies because of their need for funds, simply claimed the cable was “a one-sided and selective report of what that conversation was all about.” She did not offer the other side, despite a request from at least one British journalist. Various American embassies around the world have also condemned the leaks without denying anything in the cables.
The Maldivian regime, which was exposed in the cable demanding at least $50 million from the United States in “tangible assistance” for its support of the climate deal, claimed there was a vast smear campaign going on against it. Despite its claims that the nation would soon be underwater due to global warming, national rulers wanted the money to deepen a harbor and some other pet projects. In the leaked cable, the regime said the climate loot would show other governments "the advantages to be gained by compliance."
The media, on the other hand, has had a field day with the cables. "I know for a fact that global warming, climate change, whatever term they attach to it, is nothing more than an attempt to create socialist nations as far around the world as they can and to separate us from our money,” said talk-radio personality Rush Limbaugh during his program after the revelations. “That's all it is and now the whole thing's been exposed as a full-fledged, 100 percent fraud."
Investor’s Business Daily (IBD) also blasted the content of the documents. “Once again we are confronted with the one thing that is missing from this picture — sound science,” noted the scathing editorial. “Climate change hysteria has been generated as a means to redistribute the world's wealth and to provide a rationale for expanding government control over every aspect of our lives. But this climate Kabuki theater has little to do with saving the Earth from a real and imminent threat.”
It also attacked the bribery and shady tactics exposed throughout the leaks. “Confronted with a demonstrably cooling planet and a corrupt and fraudulent global climate-change bureaucracy, our government is reduced to bribes and coercion to cobble together a new agreement. In the absence of sound science and a rationale for committing global economic suicide, we are quite simply trying to make the world an offer it can't refuse,” concluded the IBD piece, entitled “Eco-Diplomacy, The Chicago Way.”
But despite the blow to the alarmism, statist publications such as the World Socialist Web Site had their own spin on the revelations. In a piece entitled “WikiLeaks reveals the dirty diplomacy of climate change,” the socialist reporter claimed that the revelations supposedly showed Western governments doing the bidding of their corporate overlords in attempting to dilute much-needed anti-global warming efforts.
“Far from the lofty public calls for coordinated international action, the cables offer a glimpse of the vicious struggle for national advantages and protection of domestic corporate interests,” noted the piece, citing Saudi Arabia’s stated fear of the increased “economic costs associated with ‘demonizing’ oil.”
“The dominant tactic emerging from the leaks is one of linking support for the accord with development aid to poor countries,” the socialist commentator added.
Politicians reacted to the news as well. For example: U.S. Senator James Inhofe (R-Okla.), a longtime foe of global-warming alarmists, told the Daily Caller that the cables vindicated his position while exposing the lengths to which the Obama regime would go to advance its “liberal agenda” and enforce climate orthodoxy. “For the last 10 years, I have been largely alone on this, but people have learned to understand the economics as well as the science, and clearly we have won,” he explained, adding that Obama had certain things he had to do for the “far left,” such as the development of a cap-and-trade regime.
“He has to use every resource that’s available to him to get this liberal agenda through, knowing it won’t go through,” he said. “I can see the conversations right now with George Soros: ‘He should be using the NSA on this.’ He’s going to use every resource and it’s not going to work, so nothing surprises me.”
The socialist government of Bolivia, on the other hand, a vocal advocate of warming hysteria, had a different take on the revelations. "Wikileaks confirms the pressures and blackmail exerted by the US administration in the talks. They accuse us of being 'political and ideological'. But all we want to do is to hold temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius. Is that political or ideological?” wondered Bolivian ambassador the UN Pablo Solon. “What is of concern to all of us is that this type of diplomacy is exercised in a multi-state process. One country, because of its economic power, is resorting to blackmail. This is not a negotiating process between countries who respect each other. It's an imposition."
“Climate”-policy “experts” had expressed their own perspectives, too. “Trust is very, very important, and a lot of trust was lost in Copenhagen, and it was slowly building up this year," said Ecofys climate boss Niklas Höhne, adding that the cables were not surprising but would erode trust and negatively affect future “climate” talks. "These climate negotiations are about much more than just climate. It is really world politics here," he told LiveScience.
The COP16 summit in Cancun concluded with a non-binding series of agreements that are supposed to lay the groundwork for a future global carbon regime — complete with global taxes paid to the UN. At this point, it is unclear whether the leaked cables had any effect on the outcome of the conference. But with only a fraction of the 250,000 cables released thus far, there could be a lot more damaging information exposed in the near future.
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WikiLeaks Reveals U.S. & EU Climate Bullying, Bribery, Espionage
