Reprogramming Communication Networks PDF

# Reprogramming Communication Networks ## Programming Communication Networks Political change independent of the formal procedures of political success- sion. This process results in a new state, transformed by the new power relationships embedded within it. In extreme situations, military force m...

# Reprogramming Communication Networks ## Programming Communication Networks Political change independent of the formal procedures of political success- sion. This process results in a new state, transformed by the new power relationships embedded within it. In extreme situations, military force may directly or indirectly intervene in the transformation or restoration of political institutions, thus breaking with democratic practice. In all cases of institutional rupture deviating from constitutionally mandated practices, media politics and scandal politics play a major role in brewing discontent and articulating challenges. In this sense, they are directly linked to the crisis of democracy. Yet, there is another, less apparent, form of crisis. If we accept the idea that the critical form of power-making takes place through the shaping of the human mind, and that this process is largely dependent on communi- cation, and ultimately on media politics, then the practice of democracy is called into question when there is a systemic disassociation between communication power and representative power. In other words, if the formal procedures of political representation are dependent on the informal allocation of communication power in the multimedia system, there is no equal opportunity for actors, values, and interests to operate the actual mechanisms of power allocation in the political system. It follows that the most important crisis of democracy under the conditions of media politics is the confinement of democracy to the institutional realm in a society in which meaning is produced in the sphere of media. Democracy can only be reconstructed in the specific conditions of the network society if civil society, in its diversity, can break through the corporate, bureaucratic, and technological barriers of soci- etal image-making. Interestingly enough, the same pervasive multimodal communication environment that encloses the political mind in the media networks may provide a medium for the diverse expression of alternative messages in the age of mass self-communication. Is this really so? Or is this another utopia that could transform into dystopia when placed under the lens of scholarly scrutiny? The following chapter investigates the issue. ## Reprogramming Communication Networks: Social Movements, Insurgent Politics, and the New Public Space Change, be it evolutionary or revolutionary, is the essence of life. Indeed, the still state for a living being is tantamount to death. This is also the case for society. Social change is multidimensional, but is ultimately con- tingent on a change in mentality, both for individuals and collectives. The way we feel/think determines the way we act. And changes in indi- vidual behavior and collective action gradually, but surely, impact and modify norms and institutions that structure social practices. However, institutions are crystallizations of social practices of prior moments in his- tory, and these social practices are rooted in power relationships. Power relationships are embedded in institutions of all sorts. These institutions result from the conflicts and compromises between social actors, who enact the constitution of society according to their values and interests. Therefore, the interaction between cultural change and political change produces social change. Cultural change is a change of values and beliefs processed in the human mind on a scale large enough to affect society as a whole. Political change is an institutional adoption of the new values diffusing throughout the culture of a society. Of course, no process of social change is general and instantaneous. Multiple changes proceed at different paces in a variety of groups, territories, and social domains. The ensemble of these changes, with their contradictions, convergences, and divergences, weaves the fabric of social transformation. Changes are not automatic. They result from the will of social actors, as guided by their emotional and cognitive capacities in their interaction with each other and with their environment. Not all individuals engage in the process of social change, but throughout history there are always individuals who do, thus becoming social actors. The others are "free-riders" as the theory would put it. Or, in my own terminology, selfish parasites of history-making. I conceptualize social actors aiming for cultural change (a change in val- ues) as social movements, and I characterize the processes aiming at political change (institutional change) in discontinuity with the logic embedded in political institutions as insurgent politics. I posit as a hypothesis that insurgent politics operates the transition between cultural change and political change by incorporating subjects mobilized for political or cultural change into a political system they were not previously a part of, for a variety of reasons (for example, those who were not allowed to vote, or could not participate, or withdrew from the political system because they could not see the possibility of connecting their values or their interests with the system of political representation). Furthermore, both social movements and insurgent politics may originate either from the assertion of a cultural or political project, or from an act of resistance against political institutions, when the actions of these institutions are perceived as unjust, immoral, proj ultimately illegitimate. Resistance may perceived lead to the rise of projects enacted by social movements or insurgent politics. But only when such projects arise can there be structural transformation. Thus, nobody can predict the outcome of social movements or insurgent politics. Therefore to some extent, we only know if collective actions actually subjects of social change in the aftermath of the action. This introduces the question of a timetable to determine when there is such an aftermath: a question that can only be specifically answered by research on a given process of social change, focusing on how, when, and how much new values are institutionalized in the norms and organizations of society. In analytical terms, there cannot be a normative judgment on the directionality of social change. Social movements come in all formats, as societal transformation is not predetermined by a-historical laws operating on the basis of divine fate or ideological prophecies, let alone the personal taste of the analyst. Any structural change in the values institutionalized in a given society is the result of social movements, regardless of the values put forward by each movement. And so, the collective drive to establish a theocracy is as much a social movement as the struggle for the emancipation of women. Regardless of personal preferences, social change is the change that people seek to achieve by their mobilization. When they succeed, they become the new saviors. When they fail, they become fools or terrorists. And when they fail but their values eventually triumph in a future institutional rebirth, they are enshrined as the founding mothers of a new world or, depending on their fate, as the proto-martyrs of a new gospel. Social movements are formed by communicating messages of rage and hope. The specific structure of communication of a given society largely shapes social movements. In other words, social movements, and politics, insurgent or not, spring up and live in the public space. Public space is the space of societal, meaningful interaction where ideas and values are formed, conveyed, supported, and resisted; space that ultimately becomes a training ground for action and reaction. This is why, throughout history, the control of social- ized communication by ideological and political authorities, and by the wealthy, was a key source of social power (Curran, 2002; see also Sennett, 1978; Dooley and Baron, 2001; Blanning, 2002; Morstein-Marx, 2004; Baker, 2006; Wu 2008). This is now the case in the network society, more so than ever before. In this book, I hope to have shown how multimodal communication networks constitute, by and large, the public space in the network society. And so, different forms of control and manipulation of communication networks are embedded in the institutions of the power- making, as documented in Chapters 3 and 4. Politics is media politics, and making. ads to forms of power relationships rooted in the business world of in cultural institutions. Yet, the public space is a contested terrain, however inced toward the interests of the builders and caretakers of this space. biasnout contesting the images created and projected in the public space by the powers that be, individual minds cannot reconstruct a new public mind, and so societies would be trapped in an endless process of cultural reproduction, walling off innovation, alternative projects, and ultimately social change. In sum: in the network society, the battle of images and frames, at the source of the battle for minds and souls, takes place in multimedia communication networks. These networks are programmed by the power relationships embedded within the networks, as analyzed in Chapter 4. Therefore, the process of social change requires the reprogramming of the communication networks in terms of their cultural codes and in terms of the implicit social and political values and interests that they convey. It is not an easy task. Precisely because they are multimodal, diversified, and pervasive, communication networks are able to include and enclose cultural diversity and a multiplicity of messages to a much greater extent than any other public space in history. Thus, the public mind is cap- tured in programmed communication networks, limiting the impact of autonomous expressions outside the networks. But in a world marked by the rise of mass self-communication, social movements and insurgent politics have the chance to enter the public space from multiple sources. By using both horizontal communication networks and mainstream media to convey their images and messages, they increase their chances of enacting social and political change even if they start from a subordinate position in institutional power, financial resources, or symbolic legitimacy. However, their accrued power as alternative messengers comes with a servitude: they must adapt to the language of the media and to the formats of interac tion in the communication networks. On balance, the rise of networks of mass self-communication offers greater chances for autonomy. However, for this autonomy to exist, social actors must assert the right to mass self-communication by preserving actors must assert then the deploy- ment and management of serving freedom and fairness of communication and in the practice of the networked infrastructurerty, and ultimately social change, become envined with the institutional and organizational operation of communication networks. Communication politics becomes dependent upon the politics of communication. I will elaborate on the process of social change in the new public space constituted by communication networks by focusing on two different types of social movements and two significant cases of insurgent politics. First, the construction of a new environmental consciousness leading to universal awareness of the reality, causes, and implications of climate change by a science-based social movement acting on and through the media and the Internet. Second, the challenge to corporate globalization enacted by networked social movements around the world using the Internet as an organizational and deliberative medium to encourage citizens to put pres- sure on governments and corporations in their quest for a just globaliza- tion. Third, the burgeoning, instant movements of resistance to political wrongdoing, often able to transform indignation in insurgent politics by seizing the versatility and networking capabilities of mobile phones. While I will refer to multiple cases of these "mobil-izations," I will dwell on one of the most significant of such movements: the spontaneous outcry against the manipulation of information by the Spanish government following the Madrid bombing by al-Qaeda in March 2004. Finally, I will analyze the 2008 Obama campaign in the presidential primary election in the US as it epitomizes the rise of a new form of insurgent politics with the potential of transforming the practice of politics altogether. As I will document, it was characterized by the recasting of traditional forms of community organizing in the communicative conditions of the Internet Age, arguably with considerable success, including the substitution of citizen financing for lobby financing. I will then try to bring together the meaning of these diverse movements into a common analytical thread: the potential synergy between the rise of mass self-communication and the autonomous capacity of civil societies around the world to shape the process of social change. ## Warming Up to Global Warming: The Environmental and the New Culture of Nature We have now come to accept, by and large, that the climate of the planet is changing, and that this potentially catastrophic process is primarily mane made. If corrective measures and policies follow from this recognition, we may still be able to prevent a disastrous course of events in the twenty-first century, although much time has been lost and much damage has already been done to livelihood on the blue planet. The facts are well known: since the mid-1970s, the average surface temperature has warmed by about 1°F. the Earth's surface is currently warming at a rate of about 0.32°F per decade or 3.2°F per century. The eight warmest years on record (since 1850) have all occurred since 1998; the warmest was 2005. Since 1979, when satellite all occurements of troposphere temperatures began, various satellite data sets for the mid-troposphere showed similar rates of warming-ranging from 0.09°F per decade to 0.34°F per decade, depending on the method of analysis (National Aeronautics and Space Administration, 2007; National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, 2008). The large majority of scientists in the field, on the basis of two decades of research published in peer-reviewed journals, agree that human activity is an essential contributor to global climate change. The United Nations- sponsored Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) concluded in its 2007 report, presented at a conference in Paris attended by over 5,000 scientists, that the global warming trend is "unequivocal" and that human activity is "very likely" (meaning a likelihood of at least 90%) the cause. The executive director of the United Nations Environment Program, Achim Steiner, said the report represented a tipping point in the accumulation of data on climate change, adding that February 2, 2007, the closing day of the conference, will perhaps be remembered as the day when global thinking about climate change moved from debate to action (Rosenthal and Revkin, 2007). The formal recognition of the gravity of the problem, and the international community's call to act on it, came half a century after scientists had alerted the public to the matter and environmental activists had begun to put pressure on governments, until then oblivious to the issue. ## The Long March of Environmentalism For the awareness of climate change and its consequences to settle in the public mind, and ultimately in decision-making circles, a social movement was necessary to inform, to alert, and, more importantly, to change the way we think about our collective relationship to nature. In fact, a new culture of nature had to be socially produced because, despite the signals coming from the scientific community for a long time, the power relationships embedded in the institutions and culture of our societies were adamant about defending the culture of productivism and consumerism at all costs, Because the logic of profit-making, at the source of the market economy, and the pursuit of mass consumption, the bedrock of social stability, rey, on the premise of using nature as a resource rather than as our living environment. The way we think of nature determines the way we treat fion, humankind took its historical revenge on the forces of nature that nature - and the way nature treats us. Throughout the industrial revotat for millennia appeared to dominate our survival without possible control. Science and technology enabled us to subdue the limits imposed by nature. Or so we thought. There followed a largely uncontrolled process of industrialization, urban- ization, and technological reconstruction of the living environment that has resulted in our way of life. Because standards of living in health, education, food production, and consumption of everything improved dramatically, reassuring our belief in GDP growth as a measure of progress, we kept going in a linear path of development within a productivist model whose statist version was even more extreme than the original capitalist matrix. Indeed, as late as 1989, the US National Association of Manufacturers, together with the oil and automotive industries, organized the Global Climate Coalition to oppose mandatory regulations from governments regarding global warming, a position still echoed in the 2000s by many governments, including the Bush administration. In April 1998, The New York Times published an article reporting on a memo of the American Petroleum Institute designing a strategy vis-à-vis the media to make "recognition of uncertainty [about climate change]... part of the conventional wisdom...and thereby educate and inform the public, stimulating them [the media] to raise questions with policy makers" (Cushman, 1998: 1). Lance Bennett has documented the strategies of Republican leaders in the US to spin the media with denials of the human responsibility for the generation of climate change (Bennett, 2009: ch. 3). However, it is fair to say that, in recent years, a number of major corporations, including some in the oil and automotive industries, have changed their positions substantially, including BP, Shell, Texaco, Ford, and General Motors. Since 2000, the Carbon Disclosure Project has been work- ing with corporations to disclose their carbon emissions, and in 2008 the Project published the emissions data for 3,000 of the largest corporations in the world. The worm Business Council for Sustainable Development, an association of 200 major corporations, has even called on governments to agree on global targets. The collective effort of environmental activists and scientists, who used the media to change the opinion of the public and influence decision-makers, prompted business to change its attitude, or at least the public image it would like to project. This is precisely what epito laises the role of social movements in transforming the culture of society. in this case the culture of nature Governments, however, were reluctantly, inknowledge the gravity of the problem, and even more reluctant to accept human activity as a major cause of climate change. Moreover, no effective measures were taken, as conferences met, committees were assembled, and reports were issued in a parade of rhetorical statements without significant policy consequences. Yet, the scientific community had been investigating global warming, and discussing its implications, since the nineteenth century (Patterson, 1996). In 1938, a British scientist, G. D. Calendar, presented evidence of the relationship between fossil fuels and global warming, although his findings were met with the skepticism of climate change experts: belief in the balance of nature was ingrained in the minds of science (Newton, 1993; Patterson, 1996). A pivotal moment in spreading the word beyond the small group of researchers stubbornly investigating the matter came in 1955 when Roger Revelle, a scientist with Scripps Laboratories, alerted the public about reported trends in global warming, and testified before the US Congress on the future consequences of these trends. In 1957, Charles Keeling, a young researcher at Harvard, began measuring atmospheric CO2 and produced the "Keeling Curve," which showed the increase of temper- ature over time. Revelle hired Keeling to work with him at Scripps and, together, they established that the baseline CO2 level in the atmosphere had risen at approximately the rate that Revelle had calculated (Weart, 2007). Keeling's findings had an impact on scientists in the field. The Conser- vation Foundation sponsored a 1963 conference on climate change, and scientists issued a report warning of "potentially dangerous atmospheric increases of carbon dioxide" (Conservation Foundation, 1963). In 1965, a panel of the US President's Science Advisory Committee stated that global warming was a matter of national concern. But the panel's report mentioned it only as one brief item among many other environmental problems. Despite these warnings, research such as Keeling's remained pinder-funded. At this critical juncture, scientists were aided by the envi unnmental movement that had surged in the US and around the world, as symbolized by the first Earth Day celebration in April 1970. With the move- ment's support, an emboldened scientific community forcefully requested more research and more monitoring of how human actions affected the natural environment. Several scientists, led by Carroll Wilson, organized a group at MIT in 1970 to focus on "The Study of Critical Environmental Problems." The group's final report listed global warming as a very serious issue that needed to be studied further (SCEP, 1970). Yet, while there was some media attention paid to this report, the study of global warming was largely overlooked (Weart, 2007). Wilson followed up the MIT study by organizing a meeting of experts in Stockholm, the "Study of Man's Impact on Climate," which is considered a landmark in the development of climate change awareness. The final report, which was widely read, ended with a Sanskrit prayer: "Oh, Mother Earth... pardon me for tramping on you" (Wilson and Matthews, 1971). Weart (2007) argues that during this time the rhetoric and attitudes of the environmental movement spread rapidly among climate researchers, and a new view of the relationship between science and society started to emerge in the media. This trend was indicated by a rise in press articles in American magazines related to global warming: the number of articles in the 1970s rose from three to more than 20 articles per year. As a result of this growing attention, bureaucrats put carbon dioxide into a new category: "Global Monitoring of Climatic Change." Under this title, research funding, which was stagnant for many years, doubled, and doubled again between 1971 and 1975. By the end of the 1970s, scientists largely agreed that warming was occurring, and some scientists went to the public to demand action. In many countries, environmentalists put pressure on their govern- ments to regulate on behalf of environmental protection, and governments responded by enacting laws to reduce smog and clean the water supply, among other measures (Weart, 2007). In the early 1980s, global warming had become well known enough to be included in public opinion polls for the first time. In March 1981, Al Gore held a congressional hearing on climate change, where scientists such as Revelle and Schneider testified. This hearing drew attention to the Reagan administration's plan to cut funding for CO2 research programs. Embarrassed by the media attention, the administration reversed its decision. Pressures from the environmental movement forced the newly created Department of Energy, which was ander dire threat of dismantlement. At the international level, in 1985 a joint conference was convened in Villach, Austria, by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), and the International Council of Scientific Unions (ICSU) on the "Assessment of the Role of Carbon Dioxide and of Other Greenhouse Gases in Climate Variations and Associated Impacts." The Advisory Group on Greenhouse Gases was then established by UNEP, WMO, and ICSU to ensure periodic assess- ments of scientific knowledge on climate change and its implications. A 1986 report by the WMO and NASA discussed how the atmosphere was being changed significantly by human activity. In the United States, James Hansen, a climate scientist, testified during the hearings held by Senator John Chaffee in 1986 and predicted that climate change would be measurable within a decade. Hansen created a stir among scientists with his statements, although the media paid little attention to his tes- timony. The US Congress continued to hold hearings on global warming in 1987, and Senator Joseph Biden submitted the Global Climate Pro- tection Act, signed by President Reagan, which elevated climate change to the level of a foreign policy issue. Yet, concern over global warming was still largely confined to a narrow group of scientists and interested law-makers. Then, a heat wave hit the United States in the summer of 1988, one of the hottest summers on record. No one can be sure about the relationship between a hot summer and global warming, but this is not the point. For people, and also the media, to connect atmospheric warming to their daily experience, they must feel it in some way, as was the case years later with particularly active seasons of hurricanes and tornados that became, in the minds of many, messengers of apocalyptic climate change. And so, the hot summer of 1988 "galvanized the environmental community" as no other event had done since the first Earth Day in 1970 (Sarewitz and Pielke, 2000). As the summer began, only about half of the US public was aware of global warming (Weart, 2007). Then Senator Wirth, seizing the opportunity presented by the heat wave, called a hearing on global warming in June 1988 and summoned several key witnesses. Though science hearings were usually not well attended, this one was packed with reporters (Trumbo, 1995). James Hansen, the NASA scientist who had already testified in 1986 and 1987, testified again during this hearing. and argued that data proved that temperature increases were not due to natural variation. Hansen argued that global warming was occurring and that it was a critical problem in need of immediate action. This time, his testimony was front-page news around the world, since it was the first time a respected scientist had stated so definitively that global warming posed a direct threat to the Earth. A flurry of media coverage brought the debate on global warming into the public realm (Ingram et al., 1992). Between the spring and fall of 1988, articles about global warming tripled (Weart, 2007). The number of Americans who had heard of the greenhouse effect jumped from 38 percent in 1981 to 58 percent in September 1988 (see Table 5.1), and polls showed that Americans had begun to worry a great deal about global warming. Such public concern prompted politicians to add global warming to their agendas. There was an increase in global warming-related congressional activity in the US, and 32 bills were introduced in the second session of the 100th Congress, such as the Global Warming Act and the World Environmental Policy Act. The year 1988 was also the time when intergovernmental action on climate change began to gather steam. This is, of course, essential, as global warming is, well, global. The key decision that would have considerable institutional impact on future policy-making was the establishment of the Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), under the sponsorship of the United Nations The IPCC is a scientific body that eval- uates the risk of climate change caused by human activity. The panel was established by the WMO and UNEP. Its main activity is to provide regula estabus of climate science and issue assessment reports on the evolutionar the climate. The first assessment report was published in 1990, and played d key rolete Change (UNFCCC), which was opened for signature in the Rio key role in the development of the united Nations Framework Conveyed a de Janeiro summit of 1992 and enforced in 1994. This convention provided the policy framework for addressing the climate change issue. In 1991, the IPCC expanded its membership to all member countries of the WMO and UNEP. The Second Assessment Report was published in 1995 and provided input for the Kyoto Protocol negotiations in 1997. The Third Assessment Report was initiated in 1997 and published in 2001. It contributed fur- ther information for the development of the UNFCCC and the Kyoto Protocol. The Fourth Assessment Report was released in Paris on February 2, 2007, as mentioned above, and received the approval of officials from over 130 countries after three days of negotiations regarding wording (Kanter and Revkin, 2007). During this meeting, government delegates adopted the report's "Summary for Policymakers" line by line, and then accepted the underlying report (IPCC, 2007a). While the panel members met behind closed doors for a week, they were flooded with messages from hundreds of outside experts who sought to alter the presentation of findings or the wording in one direction or another. Some scientists said that the US delegation tried to downplay language that suggested a link between hurricane intensification and warming caused by human activity (Kanter and Revkin, 2007). There were also present at the meeting a number of observers from industry groups, such as the International Chamber of Commerce, the International Petroleum Industry Environmental Conser- vation Association, and the International Aluminum Institute, as well as environmental NGOs like Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth. Before the report was released, all of the lights on the Eiffel Tower were shut off for five Tinutes. Environmental activists had advocated the darkening of the Eiffel Tower as part of a "lights out" campaign aimed at raising public awareness about global warming (BBC, 2007b). The IPCC shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with Al Gore. The Peace Prize was awarded "for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change" (Nobel Foundation, 2007). Although less noble than the IPCC endeavors, the report (classified) that the US National Intelligence Committee presented to Congress in June 2008 is just as indicative of governmental agencies' change of mind regarding climate change. The report not only acknowledged the reality of global warming, but also labeled it a threat to the national security of the United States, as its consequences were likely to increase global terrorism. The convoluted argument asserted that the devastation caused by future climate change in many poor countries of the world would throw millions into poverty, to the point where these countries would become fertile ground for recruiting terrorists. Thus, although, according to the report, the US could obtain economic benefits from global warming (because of a higher yield of agricultural crops!), climate change would "jeopardize the national interest because the United States depends on a smooth-functioning inter- national system ensuring the flow of trade and market access to critical raw materials, such as oil and gas, and security for allies and partners. Climate change and climate change policies could affect all of these" (CNN, 2008). The fact that global warming was elevated to the level of a national security issue by US intelligence agencies is indicative of a global attitude adjustment regarding climate change, a problem that had been largely ignored three decades earlier. And while the Bush administration remained reluctant until the very end of its term to engage in policy measures to confront global warming (probably because of the influence wielded by the oil industry on both the president and the vice president), the state of California, led by a Republican Governor (remember Terminator?) announced, in June 2008, a plan to bring down greenhouse emissions to 1990 levels by regulating the way electricity is generated, setting stan- dards for car-making and building construction, and establishing a carbon- credit trading market. As for the European Union, on March 9, 2007 at a summit in Brussels, the European Union's government leaders agreed on a binding target to reduce greenhouse-gas inducing emissions by at least 20 percent from 1990 levels by 2020 (see below). Thus, toward the end of the first decade of the twenty-first century, global warming had become a major global policy issue. To a large extent, this was the con- sequence of the changes that took place in the minds of citizens around the world. ## The Rise of the Environmental Mind Since the first Earth Day celebration in April 1970 there has been a dra- siatic shift in the public mind concerning the environment in genera da maticality and implications of global warming in particular. This change of mentality has taken place all over the world. Indeed, early studies of environ mentalism in the United States and Europe considered public concern over me environment to be a consequence of economic wealth, and therefore an issue unique to Western industrialized countries. However, as more cross- issional research was conducted, this perception has been proved to be inaccurate. For example, a 1992 Gallup poll, which surveyed 24 countries in different socio-economic conditions, found high concern for environ- mental issues, including global warming, in most countries (Brechin, 2003). In the US, awareness of global warming has increased considerably since the issue was first brought to the public's attention in 1988 (see Table 5.1). By combining a variety of survey results, we observe a steady increase in the awareness of global warming as a problem, with only 41 percent of the US public aware of global warming in 1982, increasing to 58 percent in 1988, over 80 percent since 1992, and 91 percent in 2006 (see also Table A5.1 in the Appendix). In recent times, and on the global scale, analysis of 11 international polls conducted by World Public Opinion (2007b) found widespread and growing concern about climate change worldwide. Every international poll found that the majority of respondents felt global warming was a problem or threat. For example, a 2007 Pew poll found that a majority of all 37 coun- tries surveyed agreed that global warming is a serious problem. Majorities in 25 countries and pluralities in six countries rated the problem as "very serious." Seventy-five percent of Americans rated the problem as serious, with 47 percent rating it very serious. In China, 88 percent considered global warming a serious problem, while 42 percent called it very serious. A Pew 2006 survey found that about two-thirds of Japanese (66%) and Indians (65%) responded that they personally worry "a great deal" about global warming, while about half of the respondents in Spain (51%) and France (45%) were greatly worried. In contrast, in the UK, only 26 percent worried a great deal. In the US in 2006, only 19 percent of respondents worried a great deal about global warming, and approximately the same did so in China (20%). Thus, in 2006, the two largest producers of greenhouse gases, the US and China, were also the countries with the lowest level of concern over global warming, despite acknowledging that it was indeed a serious problem. However, a 2007 ABC News/Washington Post/Stanford poll found the biggest of Americans identifying global stanford as the world's biggest environmental problem had doubled in just a year, with 33 percent citing it as the world's top environmental issue in 2007, compared to 16 percent in 2006. Concern about climate change appears to be growing fast worldwide. GlobeScan conducted polls across countries in 2003 and 2006, and found that the percentages calling climate change/global warming a "very seriousd problem increased by an average of 16 points. For example, in the UK, the percentage rose from 50 percent in 2003 to 70 percent in 2006, and in the US the percentage rose from 31 percent in 2003 to 49 percent in 2006. The German Marshall Fund also detected increasing concern about global warming: in ten European countries polled in 2005 and 2007, the average percentage of citizens saying that global warming is an extremely important threat increased by 5 points (from 51 to 56%). A similar increase was observed in the United States (from 41 to 46%). More importantly in terms of policy consequences, various international polls found that large majorities of respondents perceive climate change to be caused by human activity. However, the belief that humans have contributed significantly to climate change was accepted more rapidly in Europe than in other parts of the world, especially the United States (Pew, 2006). In 1999, GlobeScan found that a large majority of respondents around the world were somewhat or totally convinced that human activi- ties are a cause of climate change, except for the US (Leiserowitz, 2007). This is probably because the belief that humans cause global warm- ing is deeply polarized along political lines in the US, with 24 percent of Republicans, 54 percent of Democrats, and 47 percent of indepen- dents responding that global warming is due to human activity in 2006 (Pew, 2006). Nonetheless, a 2008 Pew survey found that 47 percent of American