The net widens

The term ‘tipping point’ is wildly over-used these days (thank you, Malcolm Gladwell). A quick Google reveals that in the last few weeks it’s been applied variously to phenomena as diverse as the Greek budget crisis, rising CO2 emissions, The Hurt Locker’s Oscar prospects and the antics of the Chicago White Sox baseball team’s manager. Enough already, one is tempted to say.

Sometimes, though, something really does reach a certain level of ubiquity, passes a point of no return or breaks through into public consciousness in such a major way that the ‘t’ word is hard to avoid. Twenty years or so on from the birth of the World Wide Web, the internet may, definitively, be said to have ‘tipped’.

Our latest poll for BBC World Service reveals that four in five adults across 26 countries surveyed regard internet access as a ‘fundamental right’. That those who use the internet now overwhelmingly regard it as a sine qua non of modern life is less surprising than that over seven in ten of those who aren’t online - that is to say, who haven’t used the internet in the last six months - feel the same way. Yes, those on the other side of the digital divide do know what they’re missing. This raises big questions for governments around spending priorities as they try to bring down budget deficits.

The Economist recently reported that, with its 350 million users, Facebook now has more ‘citizens’ than all countries except India or China. Our poll found that more than half of all internet users enjoy spending their time on social networking sites, and the usage statistics bear this out. We may now be reaching a point where Facebookers have more in common with each other in the way they live their lives and their expectations of their community than they do with their non-connected compatriots. Again, a potentially huge shock for our elected representatives. Nationality is still a big deal in driving attitudes, of course – as our polling continues to show – but for how much longer?

Another straw in the wind – our latest polling on corporate social responsibility has suddenly recorded a substantial increase across many countries in the proportion who look online for information about how responsibly companies are behaving. This is the internet as the modern oracle – the definitive arbiter and repository of collective wisdom about all elements of life; companies, political parties, products and services, celebrities: work, rest and play.

A final and revealing statistic from our BBC poll – nearly half of the web users surveyed did not feel they could cope without the internet. And, let’s not forget, it barely existed twenty years ago. For better or worse, this looks like an evolutionary change. Homo hyperconnectedus, your hour has come.

Not-So-Healthy Debate

We noted a couple of weeks ago that the Obama administration had run into the sand on one of its main campaign promises – to close the Guantanamo Bay detention centre. But next to the the liquidizer of political capital that is healthcare reform, the fate of the detainees in Cuba is small beer.

A David Brooks op-ed in the New York Times last week argues forcefully that, such is the endemic lack of trust in government in the USA, that a would-be reforming administration needs to move slowly and incrementally on a hugely contentious issue like healthcare to build the confidence of the electorate rather than attempting a 'big bang' approach. The Times now advocates a 'weak and feckless' strategy of retreat and regrouping, rather than a 'heedless and arrogant' drive to push the reforms through in the teeth of huge opposition.

Curiously, the assumption that trust in government is at rock bottom isn't borne out by our regular public attitudes tracking data. For ten years, we've been measuring the degree to which people across the world trust a range of institutions to act in the best interest of society, and recorded a twenty-two point jump in Americans' trust in government between late 2007 and late 2009. Certainly, 2007 represented the dog days of the Bush administration, and the shine has certainly come off Obama and his team since our poll was taken, but still. A net trust rating of +25 isn't the worst starting point for major reform.

What looks more likely is that Obama's problems getting healthcare reform through is less because Americans across the board don't trust their government, and more because the nation remains hopelessly, viciously, ruinously divided on a whole range of emotive issues. Despite a filibuster-proof majority in Congress, Obama in fact invested a lot of time and energy consulting on the shape of a reformed healthcare system, trying to forge a 'bi-partisan' plan with support from both Republicans and Democrats. It's far from clear that much common ground exists. The resulting fudge, as the Times correctly points out, hasn't satisfied anyone and the wrangling has in the meantime allowed the reforms to be painted – ludicrously - as something akin to a Communist takeover of the federal government. This is one instance where, ironically, a less inclusive approach might have proven less divisive in the longer term.

Transformational Corporate Sustainability – The Salon

Every few months, we invite ‘friends of GlobeScan’ - clients, fellow consultants and members of our network from across the world of business, NGOs, media and government - to join us for a Salon. These are informed but informal discussion evenings on one of the issues we regularly research, over organic beer and snacks at our offices in London. On Tuesday, speakers from GSK, Fairtrade, InterfaceFLOR and SustainAbility shared their thoughts about transformational leadership in sustainability.

This time last year our Salon’s focus had been on ‘the great disruption’ - the ongoing financial meltdown then at the forefront of everyone’s minds. Would it prove to be a turning point and the herald of the birth of a more sustainable global economic system, or merely a hiccup in business as usual? As SustainAbility’s Mark Lee, the evening’s moderator and co-host, pointed out, even if the crisis had had a profound impact on the pace and nature of the sustainability debate, the fact that a year later we were now able to meet and discuss the further transformational leadership needed could be construed as reason to be cheerful.

GlobeScan’s Chris Coulter opened with some findings from The Sustainability Survey – our regular study of experts opinion across business, NGOs, academia and government conducted as a joint venture with SustainAbility. This highlighted the growing sense of urgency surrounding sustainability, and also the ‘changing of the guard’ we’ve noted here before in terms of perceived leaders in sustainable business, with new names like GE and Walmart starting to emerge alongside the established names.
The two companies on the panel, both leading lights in their respective industries, symbolised this shift, with Interface having made the leap in 1995, but GSK’s renewed commitment coming more recently with the arrival of a new CEO.

Much of the discussion, indeed, focused on the role of CEOs in driving sustainable change. Thanks to some live polling with our audience, while we knew that 75% of our audience were optimistic that most FTSE100 companies would embrace sustainability at the core of their operations in the next decade, many saw CEOs as a major barrier to doing so. Not all agreed, though - few CEOs these days, we heard, are actively hostile to sustainability. Others stressed that CEOs leadership was indispensable – they were often uniquely able within a company to decide to take a longer-term view of an issue and override targets that other staff were subject to. The two corporate panellists both highlighted the central role of Interface’s Founder and Chairman, Ray Anderson and GSK’s CEO, Andrew Witty – had played in their company’s sustainability efforts.

Most seemed to feel that companies now best positioned to lead on sustainability and become transformational leaders were those that had integrated it into their activities before the recession took hold. InterfaceFLOR Europe CEO Lindsey Parnell said he thought that sustainability was now so embedded within his company and so much a part of how its people saw themselves that the culture would survive any change at the top. In contrast, the feeling was those companies that hadn’t already embraced sustainability so were now too preoccupied with survival to contemplate major culture changes.

But there were felt to be other barriers preventing transformational leadership by companies. GSK’s Duncan Learmouth questioned whether the short-term focus of financial markets was a major obstacle to transformation and a limit to companies’ ability to act on their own. He also highlighted the lack of reliable data and analytical tools available to corporate leaders, without which the adoption of a fundamentally new business model was just too much of a risk. Fairtrade’s Barbara Crowther stressed that market mechanisms still failed to adequately price in ‘externalities’ – environmental and social harm – and that greater regulation was needed. A more responsible approach to marketing, she thought, was also key, with less messaging focusing solely on tempting consumers with too-low prices.

So, was the tipping point coming soon? Most of the panellists thought it was, even if greater consumer impetus was needed to push companies over the edge. And meanwhile, perhaps sustainability as a professional discipline has come of age – as Chris Coulter pointed out, many of those involved in the development of CSR have now racked up the ’10,000 hours’ supposedly required to become an expert in any field. Maybe in 2010 we’ll start to see the fruits of that expertise.

Brown Down, but Far From Out

The date may not have been announced yet, but it’s clear that campaigning for this year’s general election in the UK is already well underway. Making my way around London, it’s been hard to escape the giant poster of Conservative opposition leader David Cameron. “We can’t go on like this”, the 15-foot high blown-up Dave urges – and a cursory glance at the polls suggests many agree, with some having Labour trailing by over 10 points. On top of this, the Tories have a much larger campaign war-chest and Labour seem more set on working out whether they still want to be led by Gordon Brown than pulling off an electoral miracle.

So – is it safe to assume we’ll be seeing a change of government when Britain goes to the polls this spring?

Not quite.

Most importantly, there’s the economy – on which this Prime Minister’s reputation is especially dependent. When Brown assumed the office in 2007 he was able to contrast years of steady economic growth under his own stewardship as Chancellor with previous boom-bust cycles under the Tories. Whatever its causes, the global economic crisis has rather undermined this selling point in the minds of many.

Brown’s main hope, then, is that that voters see clear evidence of economic recovery before the Spring and there is a corresponding rise in his personal reputation. Cameron’s rhetoric on the economy to date has emphasized the need for austerity, spending cuts and a balanced budget. Contrast this with Brown’s aversion to even using the C-word and you start to see the strategy: wait for the economy to pick up, and then argue that Tory cuts will choke off the nascent recovery.

There are signs he may be helped by a more upbeat mood among consumers. As far back as October, GlobeScan’s Consumer Sentiment Index showed that as many households expected to be better off in a year’s time as expect to be worse off. Forty-four per cent said they considered it a good time to buy major household goods, as opposed to 27% saying it was a bad time. Interestingly, a number of major retailers have recently reported trading figures for the festive period that are up on last year’s.

Structural factors may help Labour too – quirks of the UK’s first-past-the-post electoral system mean that the Tories need to secure a disproportionately large swing in order to secure a governable majority.

Finally, there’s always the possibility of something terrible happening to derail the Conservative campaign. This year, for the first time, the public get treated to US-style debates between the party leaders. The ability of these to turn elections probably get exaggerated in light of the Kennedy-Nixon debates in 1960, but there’s always the potential for gross blunders in live debate. Or the Tories could have one of their habitual internal implosions over European policy.

So, while the odds firmly favour a Tory victory - there’s still much campaigning to do: if enough of these factors - and particularly the economy - turn in Labour’s favour, then Brown could yet work the miracle.

Guantanamo: not closed, and no cigar for Obama

A year into his presidency, Barack Obama recently confirmed what most already realized: that he would fail to fulfil the promise given in his inaugural speech to close the detention centre at Guantanamo Bay within his first year of office.

Between the reluctance of representatives in Congress to accommodate Guantanamo detainees in their districts, the unwillingness of most of the US's international allies to receive detainees themselves and the political impossibility of repatriating them to countries seen as breeding grounds for terrorism such as Yemen – as well as an alarming lack of coordination between US government agencies, as BBC Radio 4 revealed last night - the problem has proved a real headache for the administration, and Guantanamo remains open.

The Obama administration has sometimes appeared to be out of step with US public opinion on some domestic issues in his first year – notably on healthcare reform – and this is an area where failure to fulfil an election promise may actually go down well with the electorate. A new CBS poll suggests that a majority of Americans oppose the closing of Guantanamo.

But other countries are likely to view the issue very differently. Guantanamo has been a running sore for the US's global image and the promise to close it was one of the most powerful symbols of change from the Bush years put forward by the new administration.

Our annual tracking of perceived country influence last year revealed a continued improvement in views of US influence by the global public as Obama took office. With this year's results due in a few weeks' time, we will see whether this improvement is persisting – or whether the latest disappointment has taken the shine off America's rejuvenated image around the world. Watch this space.

Unrealpolitik

Three weeks on from Copenhagen, and the blanket of snow currently enveloping much of the northern hemisphere hasn't obscured deep disappointment about the outcome of December's climate conference. No one appears to believe that the deal achieved is sufficient to make an impact on global carbon emissions and limit global warming to within safe levels.

Who's to blame? The list of candidates is long. The image of hapless hosts Denmark may take some time to recover. But what has become increasingly apparent over recent weeks is the lengths that the Chinese delegation were prepared to go to in order to avoid being subjected to a binding global agreement that might hamper their growth . Mark Lynas's account in The Guardian of the walkouts, the snubs and the last-minute scuppering of targets that did not even affect China makes depressing reading.

Given the level of ambivalence among the Chinese public about a strong global deal at Copenhagen (as we noted last month) this attitude by their leaders should not perhaps have come as a surprise. But, by any standards, theirs was pretty ruthless behaviour. That being the case, you might have thought that climate activists and NGOs would not be slow to point the finger?

Not so. Their ire has been directed almost exclusively at the countries of the developed West and, in the case of George Monbiot, at Barack Obama himself. The ink on the non-deal was barely dry before John Sauven of Greenpeace was referring to Copenhagen as a 'crime scene, with the guilty men and women fleeing to the airport'. Regardless of what Western countries might have put on the table (and in some cases it was substantial), and regardless of Chinese wrecking tactics, the environmental movement's mindset required that the West were identified as the villains of the piece.

Monbiot bemoans the failure of concerned liberals to take to the streets in large numbers to demand action on the climate from their leaders. But why are we surprised? In relentlessly accentuating the negative, ramping up the rhetoric to ever greater heights and allowing post-industrial guilt to trump a sense of what can actually be achieved, the environmental movement has itself been guilty of disempowering those who might have been supporters. If you portray the problem of climate change as unimaginably huge, decry any attempt to tackle it politically as a shameful betrayal and make no attempt to help people imagine how they might live fulfilling lives in a low-carbon world, don't be surprised if most of them bury their heads in the sand.

A few weeks before Copenhagen, I attended a gathering of NGOs, think tanks, labour organisations and corporates to discuss the 'green economy'. Talk turned glumly to Copenhagen, and I wondered aloud to a senior campaigner at one of the major environmental NGOs why his organisation wasn't concentrating its efforts on where advances could be made – lobbying multinationals, working with enlightened US states, championing new technologies. This was sniffily dismissed as 'realpolitik' and I was assured that 'doom and gloom is what we do best'.

This seems breathtakingly complacent to me. Our research shows that while NGOs are still trusted more than most institutions, trust in them is declining and people value them more for the aid and assistance they give than their campaigning work. Instead of peddling 'unrealpolitik', environmental NGOs – and the movement as a whole – should be taking advantage of the fact that they don't have elections to win every few years and play a positive role - building coalitions, articulating a vision, thinking the unthinkable, helping people to imagine what a different future could look like. It's never been more important.

Danish Blues

With the Copenhagen summit now underway, global attention is focused on the climate change issue, arguably as never before.

Our latest BBC World Service poll shows that – even in the midst of a recession – public concern over the climate has reached its highest level in the 11 years we’ve been tracking it. In total, 64% of those across the 24 countries we polled said they considered climate change a ‘very serious’ problem. In 13 of the countries we’ve been asking this question on a regular basis since 1998, and we’ve seen a sharp increase in concern on this measure from 44% to 63% overall.

Undoubtedly, until the buildup to COP15 started, the economic crisis had been keeping climate change out of the headlines, and the proportion of people in our polling naming the environment as the biggest issue facing their country dropped sharply. But while the economy was imploding, the steady accrual of alarming news about the climate has propelled concern about climate change – a problem which is, let’s not forget, complex, multi-faceted and (at least for now) somewhat abstract – to new heights. As our poll shows, there is substantial support for governments taking a strong line and supporting ambitious targets to fight climate change.

The UEA emails row may have provided a straw to clutch at for the sceptically-minded and the conspiracy theorists. But the likelihood is that any dampening effect that this has on concern will be temporary – particularly if we see a repeat of the scorching summers, hurricanes and snow-free winters that have become an increasing feature of the last decade.

What our poll also shows, however, is that leadership at Copenhagen will probably have to come from somewhere else besides the world’s two leading CO2 emitters, China and the USA. In both of those countries, concern has dropped back since 2007, and both are ambivalent about their governments pushing for a strong global climate agreement in Denmark.