When we look at world conditions and project current trends into the future we see much that is disturbing—environmental degradation, the proliferation of nuclear weapons, persisting poverty and injustice, violent conflict, the fiscal collapse of democratic governments. The institutions that have the greatest power—nation states, corporations, and organized interest groups—seem locked in patterns of self-interested behavior such that the necessary changes are hard to imagine. Yet when we look to the past we see that there have been remarkable evolutionary changes — the emergence of democracy, the abolition of slavery, universally recognized principles of the rights of women and minorities, concern for the environment, international laws against aggressive wars and significant efforts by those in wealthy nations to address global poverty. During the run-up to these changes they too surely seemed unimaginable. So what is it that brings about such shis? At every point there are self-interested forces that cling to a status quo they prefer or stay locked in polarized patterns that perpetrate a status quo, which few like, but still seems impossible to change. And yet somehow, at key points, a new consciousness emerges in society that is less rigid and polarized and more inclusive and flexible, which gradually prompts changes in the way society is structured. In formulating retrospective narratives of how such changes occurred, it is common to portray the process as driven by heroic and visionary leaders. No doubt they play a critical role. But the real force of change comes from society itself. Leaders cannot lead people where they do not really want to go. Leaders can only articulate what is already trying to emerge in society and in that way facilitate its realization. If we think of society as a system, we can look at the various pressures for change and ask what is trying to emerge in that system. If we think of society in human terms, we can ask, what is the whole of society trying to say? As the world has become more integrated, the challenges that we face have also become more interconnected and global in nature. Thus, the question of what is emergent in society has increasingly become the question of what is emergent in the world as a whole. While in recent years there has been increasing talk about global society, it is not an entirely new idea. For quite some time people have spoken about world public opinion as a kind of moral force. Even though there was no clear way to define it, there was still a shared sense that it existed and, on some issues, an idea of what it said. However, it was still quite amorphous. In just the last decade, though, this has changed. For the first time, there have been a substantial number of surveys that have been conducted in parallel in numerous countries—enough to constitute the majority of humanity. These include the surveys conducted by the WorldPublicOpinion.org project, World Values Survey consortium, the Pew Global Attitudes Project, and the BBC World Service polls conducted by GlobeScan and the Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland. Recently, WorldPublicOpinion.org in partnership with the pro- gram on Global Governance at the Council on Foreign Relations developed a comprehensive digest that drew together all of these international polls. What we found was quite striking. It revealed a remarkable level of consensus on a wide range of issues facing the planet. [See www.cfr.org/thinktank/iigg/pop for more details including questions and country-by-country findings.] A key example is the issue of climate change. One might think of climate change as a problem that publics would have trouble relating to. People can barely see its effects and they continue to hear debate within the scientific community. Nonetheless, clear majorities in most nations say that it is necessary to take significant action to address climate change. People express a readiness to accept changes that will require real costs—even when it is put in very specific terms—and to make changes in their lifestyles. Given that some of these changes will be uncomfortable, you might expect that the dynamic would be one where the government would be pulling on its citizenry to make the necessary changes, like a parent tugging on a reluctant child. However, the opposite appears to be the case. In a 2009 WorldPublicOpinion.org poll, in fifteen out of nineteen nations majorities indicated that their government should give higher priority to climate change than it does now. In no nation did more than one in three want their nation to give it a lower priority. On average, 60% of respondents across all nations polled wanted their government to give climate change a higher priority. One of the biggest obstacles to the resolution of many international issues is the resistance of nation states to subordinate them- selves to international law and to give international institutions the necessary power to resolve international problems. to continue reading, click here BM
