The e-mail messages, attributed to prominent American and British climate researches, include discussions of scientific data and whether it should be released, exchanges about how best to combat the arguments of skeptics, and casual comments —in some cases derisive— about specific people known for their skeptical views. Drafts of scientific papers and a photo collage that portrays climate skeptics on an ice floe were also among the hacked data, some of which dates back 13 years.

In one e-email exchange, a scientist writes of using a statistical "trick" in a chart illustrating a recent sharp warming trend. In another, a scientist refers to climate skeptics as "idiots".

Some skeptics asserted Friday that the correspondence revealed an effort to withhold scientific information. "This is not a smoking gun; this is a mushroom cloud," said Patrick J. Michaels, a climatologist who has long faulted evidence pointing to human-driven warming and is criticized in the documents.

Some of the correspondence portrays the scientist as feeling under siege by the skeptics' camp and worried that any stray comment or data glitch could be turned against them.

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BUt several scientists whose names appear in the e-mail messages said thet merely revealed that scientists were human, and did nothing to undercut the body of research on global warming. "Science doesn't work because we're all nice," said Gavin A. Schmidt, a climatologist at NASA whose e-mail exchanges with colleagues over a variety of climate studies were in the cache. "Newton may have been an ass, but the theory of gravity still works."

This pattern of belief is deeply rooted in the American psyche and has regularly stymied efforts at reform. Americans have supported, or have come to support, specific governmental remedies, such as Social Security, the minimum wage, and environmental and consumer protections. But, when a new program that expands government is proposed, they have displayed a general ideological predisposition against the power of government. As Obama tries to get his reform agenda through Congress, this predisposition is already proving to be a formidable obstacle.

Americans' skepticism about government dates at least from the Revolution. In The Liberal Tradition in America, published in 1955, political scientist Louis Hartz described the Americans of 1776 as "Lockean liberals". He was using the term "liberal: in its classic connotation —more like today's free-market conservative or libertarian. Americans, he perceived, envisaged the state as strictly limited to protecting property relations among equal producers. They saw strong government —which they identified with the British crown— as a threat to economic and political freedom. Government, in Thomas Paine's words, was a "necessary evil".

The first adherents to this Lockean liberalism were followers of Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson —small farmers and (in Jackson's case) urban workingmen who attacked the statism of the Federalist elite. But, after the Civil War, a rising business class invoked it against the political left, claiming that a policy of laissez-faire would best ensure a prosperous America. Lockean liberalism became free-market conservatism.

By the end of the nineteenth century, panics, crashes, yawning inequality, and other market failures provoked a challenge to this free-market conservatism; populists, socialists, progressives, and, later, liberals called for the state to curb the market. But, even during the high tides of liberal reform, free-market ideology held sway. In 1935, Americans overwhelmingly backed specific New Deal programs, but Gallup found them opposed to an increase in government regulation by 53 percent to 37 percent. In a pathbreaking 1967 book, The Political Beliefs of Americans, political scientists Lloyd Free and Hadley Cantril found that Americans suffer from a contraditionc between "ideological conservatism" and "opertional liberalism". According to their analysis of surveys they had conducted, only 16 percent of Americans —with blacks and Jews leading the way— were ideologically and operationally liberal.

There are a number of converging factors that help explain why ideological conservatism has endured and so often bested operational liberalism. Lockean liberalism clearly benefited from its identification, in the nineteenth century and early twentieth century, with rapid economic growth. Like the British of the early twentieth century who clung to the gold standard as the secret of their past glory, Americans clung to the myth of the unfettered free market. At the same time, there was never a strong statist tradition from which reformers could draw their precedents. Americans lacked not only a feudal absolutist past, but also a history of successful state capitalism: Liberals and progressives could only invoke European or Federalist precedents. The great progressive manifesto that advocated a strong state, Herbert Croly’s The Promise of American Life, appeared in 1909 and has been largely ignored ever since.

Lockean liberalism also got a boost from business lobbies and Republicans, who, in the first half of the twentieth century, worked to align “free enterprise” with the “American way of life” and liberal or progressive statism with socialism, communism, and fascism. Later, Republicans succeeded in identifying liberalism with taxes on the middle class and spending on minorities.

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Liberals and progressives have fared poorly in the face of this staunch anti-statist tradition, but there have still been periods when they have broken through and enacted major reforms--during Woodrow Wilson’s first term, Franklin Roosevelt’s first term, Lyndon Johnson’s first two years, and Richard Nixon’s first term. They succeeded for different reasons at different times, but several conditions recur.

To begin with, market breakdown has always helped the cause of operational liberalism. Wilson and the reformers in Congress were able to pass legislation establishing the Federal Reserve and the Federal Trade Commission because a succession of depressions and bank panics had worried business and angered workers and farmers. Roosevelt’s reforms, of course, came on the heels of the 1929 crash and the Great Depression, which raised questions about the sanctity of the market.

Democratic ability to neutralize business and energize the left has also been key to reform. Roosevelt and Democrats in Congress took advantage of divisions within business, as well as the public’s distrust of business leaders, to get their program across. They also benefited from the energy of organized movements on their left. If it had not been for the pressure exerted by a renascent labor movement and by the followers of populist Huey P. Long and pension advocate Francis Townsend, Roosevelt (who was privately something of a Lockean liberal) might never have backed, and Congress might never have passed, tax reform, Social Security, and the National Labor Relations Act.

These same conditions —a divided business community and an energized left— were also key to the spate of reforms adopted during Nixon’s first term. Business, fearful of an alliance between labor and the New Left, and of popular movements for environmental and consumer reform, acquiesced to proposals for regulatory reform put forward by Democratic majorities in Congress. Incredible as it may seem now, a 1970 Fortune survey of executives from the 500 largest firms found that 57 percent believed government should “step up regulatory activities.” That support would quickly plummet, but it allowed a great burst of liberal reform to occur.

Of course, having party majorities in Congress has also been important. In 1935, Democrats and two allied parties held 71 of 96 Senate seats and 332 out of 435 House seats. In 1965, Johnson could count on 68 senators and 295 House representatives. These huge majorities allowed Roosevelt and Johnson to function in a quasi-parliamentary manner, ignoring their partisan opposition in Congress and passing reforms representing compromise between the center and left of their own parties.

Finally, reformers have learned how to craft their proposals in ways that would not raise anti-statist hackles. Wilson, Roosevelt, and the Democrats in Nixon’s first term targeted specific abuses of the market for regulation. They claimed to be improving, rather than limiting, the operation of the market. Wilson’s Federal Trade Commission was billed as the means to promote market competition. Roosevelt replaced planning with regulation after the Supreme Court threw out the National Recovery Administration. And liberals promoted welfare measures, including old-age pensions and unemployment compensation, that were aimed at meeting public needs that the private market could not or would not meet. They were consistent with a mild strain of Lockean liberalism.

No soy contrario a la reflexión. La reflexión precede a la acción. El problema es que estamos convirtiendo las instituciones en think-tank y nos falta action-tank. Rememorando a Gramsci, el problema es que hoy se puede ser más pesimista de la voluntad que de la inteligencia. Creo que no falta inteligencia para comprender qué tenemos que hacer. Lo que falta es voluntad para ponerlo en práctica.

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¿Europa debe reflexionar? Sí, pero no debe quedarse en la reflexión. Debo decir que ayer me tomé la molestia de leer la última resolución del Consejo Europeo y oigo una queja permanente: no nos entienden los ciudadanos; ni siquiera lo entienden los jefes de gobierno que han hecho la resolución. Hay partes que no se entienden y otras que son puras declaraciones de estado de ánimo: "El Consejo se complace de que haya pasado no sé qué cosa... o manifiesta su preocupación de que esté pasando no sé qué otra...". Y para colmo, el último Consejo apostó por la segunda vuelta de las elecciones en Afganistán como un factor inevitable de legitimación de la democracia afgana, pero a las 24 horas se decidió que no había segunda vuelta.

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No hay que analizar las políticas actuales; pero para hablar del horizonte de 2020-2030, si no se habla del cambio de las políticas actuales lo único que se hace es marcar un horizonte que siempre se aleja, como se está distanciando el horizonte del cumplimiento de la Agenda de Lisboa. La Agenda de Lisboa tenía el horizonte 2000-2010. Los países que han hecho algo que se parece al análisis de la Agenda de Lisboa lo han hecho, no por imposición de la Agenda de Lisboa, sino porque estaban convencidos de que tenían que hacerlo. Casi todos están en la parte norte de Europa. Estos países han ganado competitividad, han flexibilizado sus relaciones industriales, han mantenido un grado de cohesión social altísimo y no a un coste mayor que otros que tienen menos cohesión social.

Punto número uno de la reflexión a futuro: la agenda de Lisboa no se ha cumplido. ¿Hay alguna posibilidad de que Europa declare que no se ha realizado y que hagamos otra cosa o que hagamos esto con instrumentos distintos? Lo dudo. Creo que hay que cumplir algunas de las previsiones de la Agenda de Lisboa. Sería el primer punto de reflexión del grupo: ¿cómo Europa llega a insertarse en la sociedad del conocimiento? No lo diré porque suena arrogante, pero se decía en la Agenda de Lisboa: "¿Cómo nos convertimos en 2010 en la primera potencia económico-tecnológica del mundo con un modelo social cohesionado?". Desgraciadamente no se sabe cómo, porque la distancia tecnológica con EE UU ha aumentado y la aproximación de algunos países emergentes es evidente. Es evidente que los objetivos no se han cumplido. En los países en que se han cumplido no ha sido por la Agenda de Lisboa sino porque lo han visto, han reformado la formación del capital humano, han cambiado las cosas.

Y creo que no se puede discutir, seriamente, de manera separada el modelo social de la economía, y el valor que puede añadir para financiar el modelo social. Creo que es una demagogia que sólo se puede tratar en abstracto: si la economía no es capaz de añadir valor para financiar el modelo social que soñamos, no habrá modelo social, no es financiable.

Si estamos perdiendo capacidad de competir en la economía global -aunque haya mucha discusión sobre la competitividad-, por mucho que nos enorgullezcamos del modelo social, no lo vamos a poder sostener, salvo que seamos equitativos repartiendo pobreza o menor capacidad de distribución de bienestar.

El segundo punto es la energía y el cambio climático. Está apuntado, aunque no claramente, en el mandato. Tampoco se puede discutir por separado, aunque es verdad que los temas medioambientales son algo más que los problemas energéticos. Respecto a esto sólo haré algunas afirmaciones. No hace falta modificar ningún tratado para tener un mercado común de la energía o un mercado interior de la energía y una política energética común. No hace falta tener que soportar los cortes de gas que soportamos -que no ocurrían en otras épocas- porque 500 millones de consumidores no tienen una estrategia energética común. Por eso a veces digo: No ma-no-se-e-mos más los tratados. ¿Que no se está satisfecho con el Tratado de Lisboa? No importa. Es un problema de voluntad, no de instrumentos. Hay instrumentos.

Tercera aproximación, después de la de energía y de la del cambio climático. Tenemos que hacer algo respecto de los flujos migratorios. En el horizonte de 2050, por no quedarme corto, a Europa le faltarán 70 millones de personas en activo -¡70 millones de activos sobre los activos actuales!- ¿Cómo se va a suplir esto? Seguramente va a ser con un mix de políticas, pero con el tratamiento que hacemos de la emigración, o incluso de la relación con el sur del Mediterráneo, digo: esto no tiene solución. Habrá que modificarlo. Tampoco podrá haber 20 o 15 políticas migratorias diferentes en un mercado interior y en un espacio Schengen. Puede haberlas para la inserción en la sociedad correspondiente; pero para las fronteras, para las relaciones con terceros, no.

Cuarto punto, que tiene interés. Cuando se habla de seguridad en el mandato [se refiere al que creó el Grupo de Reflexión], se mencionan dos amenazas: terrorismo y criminalidad organizada. Pero nadie preveía que unos meses después íbamos a tener una tensión tan dura como la de Georgia, aparte de que ya entonces no se podía decir que Europa sólo está amenazada por la criminalidad organizada y por el terrorismo. Primero el conflicto de Georgia, después todo el debate habido sobre el escudo antimisiles... Los problemas de seguridad tienen una perspectiva distinta.

Y quinto punto, por reducirlo a esto -lo que te regalé antes, te lo cobro ahora-: necesitamos una política exterior y de seguridad que sea la envolvente para conseguir los objetivos, teniendo claro que defendemos intereses. Este discurso de que nosotros defendemos valores es una simpleza; defendemos intereses, que son los europeos, en un marco de valores que son los nuestros. El instrumento es la política exterior y de seguridad. Muy bien. Vamos a tener un alto representante, vamos a tener un Servicio Exterior, el más grande del mundo, vamos a tener más representaciones de la Unión en el mundo que ningún otro país. ¿El alto representante va a dirigir el Servicio Exterior o lo va a coordinar? Es una pregunta importante. El alto representante como vicepresidente de la Comisión -no puedo hablar de los temas institucionales- ¿va a coordinar, con la política exterior, la política de cooperación, que es la más importante del mundo? ¿O eso va a ser una pieza suelta del sistema? ¿Va a coordinar algo de la política comercial para ajustar la política exterior a los intereses comerciales y las políticas de cooperación?