Global warming.

THE friends of freedom are alive and well all over the world.

Consider The Mont Pelerin Society: What began on a Swiss mountain in 1947 when Friedrich von Hayek assembled 36 economists, philosophers, and entrepreneurs with a shared commitment to the free society, is now an international network of more than five hundred academics, polemicists, and entrepreneurs of ideas from forty countries.

Now we see these same ideas politically dominant everywhere we look. In Western Europe, for example, the intellectual revolution sparked by the original Mont Pelerin Society gathering has been carried on for nearly forty years by the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), a group of academics led for many years by Lord Harris of High Cross and Arthur Seldon, and now ably guided by John Blundell.

Using the IEA model, the late Sir Anthony Fisher, and more recently his successors Alex Chafuen and Leonard Liggio, have helped establish more than one hundred think tanks around the world, all involved in developing and propagating conservative ideas.

It is no coincidence that the institution in America most closely identified with Hayek, the University of Chicago, has led the global revolution in economic thinking -- a revolution that has earned the Chicago school more Nobel Prizes in economic science than any other institution in the world.

The Chicago Boys, as they are affectionately known, have changed the economic face of the world. After the ouster of Salvador Allende, General Pinochet called in the Chicago Boys and gave them carte blanche to fix the country's Marxist economy. After they had done that, they showed Chile how to replace its government social-security system with a private system that is today the envy of the world (and should be a model for reform here in the United States). The local architects of the Chilean miracle later established the Instituto Libertad y Desarrolo in Santiago, which under the leadership of Christian Larroulet has set new standards for the advancement of the free society.

There are now numerous institutions where a conservative education can be had south of the border as well, starting with the Universidad Francisco Marroquin, a private university in Guatemala, founded by Manuel Ayau. In Mexico, the Center for Free Enterprise Research (founded by Luis Pazos and now ably led by Roberto Salinas) and the Ludwig von Mises Institute (headed by Carolina de Bolivar) both have helped change the terms and tone of Mexico's national political dialogue, influencing not only the conservative party, PAN, but also the long-entrenched ruling party, the PRI. UCLA's Clay Laforce lends his considerable expertise to promoting sensible policies throughout the region.

Argentina and Brazil also have free-market institutes, including the Centro Estudios Sobre Libertad in Buenos Aires and the Instituto Liberal de Rio in Porto Alegre, as do Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Paraguay, and several other countries. In Peru, Hernando de Soto has been studying entrepreneurship, especially what the scholars like to call the "micro-enterprise," (a/k/a the "little guy," trying to eke out a living despite the many obstacles thrown in his way by government).

In the Pacific region, Greg Lindsay's Centre for Independent Studies is the dominant free-market institution in Australia and New Zealand. In fact, New Zealand -- a social basket case just a few years ago -- now has one of the freest economies in the world, according to the Heritage Foundation's annual "Index of Economic Freedom." It has earned this honor by becoming one of the world's most aggressive privatizers, by deregulating the labor market, and by loosening the government's control over the economy. There, too, ideas that a decade ago were considered anathema are now broadly accepted across the political spectrum.

IN ASIA, while many academics and intellectuals are strong advocates of the free society, there is not yet an institutional framework to promote these ideas. Even in a huge country like India, which has a strong Western tradition and now understands the dynamics of privatization and entrepreneurship, there is no dominant free-market research institute.

South Africa is a pleasant surprise. There, the Free Market Foundation, led by Leon Louw and Temba Nolutshungu, has been helping for more than a decade now to design a real market economy for the new government. In Israel, plagued by a ponderous, bureaucratic socialist economy, the intellectual opposition is led by Robert Loewenberg's Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies (whose economic-studies program is directed by the Hoover Institution's flat-tax guru Alvin Rabushka) and Daniel Doron's Israel Center for Social and Economic Progress. The two Israeli think tanks keep reminding the Israeli government and people what needs to be done to fix the economy; the government just doesn't do it.

In the Czech Republic, Prime Minister Vaclav Klaus's vigorous privatization program followed the Thatcher model. By making the Czech people shareholders in the newly privatized enterprises, Klaus has given them an important stake in the new system. Jiri Schwarz's Liberalni Institut provides the intellectual underpinnings. As a result, the Czech Republic is to the former Soviet Empire what Chile is to Latin America.

While Central and Eastern Europe attempt to undo years of Communism, Western Europe is afflicted by statism of another sort -- the kind of over-regulation we are fighting here at home. Fortunately, most of Europe has both the political and intellectual leadership needed for market ideas to prevail.

In Italy, former Mont Pelerin Society President Antonio Martino recently served as foreign minister. And in France, Alain Madelin, another market advocate, recently served as minister of commerce and industry. Even without these political leaders in office, conservative ideas are well represented in the academic community -- Henri Lepage and Pascal Salin in France, for example -- and will be ready as the new political leadership emerges.

Germany has an abundance of market-oriented institutions, including the Frankfurt Institute, founded by Professor Gert Dahlmanns, and twin institutes at the University of Kiel: the Institute of the World Economy, until recently headed by Herbert Giersch, and the Institute for Political Science, headed by Werner Kaltefleiter. Kiel has thus become an important center of conservative thought and a major training ground for future conservative leaders.

Elsewhere in Germany, Christian Watrin at the University of Cologne keeps alive the tradition of Ludwig Erhard, the creator of the German economic miracle and an early disciple of Hayek and Roepke in the political arena. Roland Vaubel and a host of other individual academics reinforce the policy leaders.

The list goes on, from Greece, where the Center for Political Research and Information just celebrated its 20th anniversary, to Russia, where a variety of institutions -- the Krieble Institute, the Institute of the World Economy and International Relations, and the Center for the Study of the Russian Economy -- is bringing freedom's compelling message to the former Soviet state. Each has a unique mission. The Krieble Institute is training educators and entrepreneurs in the market system. The Center for the Study of the Russian Economy, headed by Vitaly Naishul, has provided principled market economic policies for key parliamentary reformers led by Arkady Murashev and Yegor Gaidar. Murashev also oversees the Liberal Conservative Center designed to develop legislative ideas.

A major coordinating role is played by the Windsor Group in Geneva, headed by Geoff Carlson, which brings together academics, politicians, and political activists from throughout Central Europe and which will, we hope, help direct the next wave of reform governments.

As we complete this circling of the globe, even our neighbor to the north is making progress. Finally, Canadian politics is catching up with the world of conservative ideas, ably represented by the Fraser Institute, under its longtime director Mike Walker.

However, it took the virtual destruction of Canada's Progressive Conservative Party for a true free-market alternative to emerge. In June 1995, in Ontario, the most socialist provincial government in all of Canada was replaced by a new breed of Progressive Conservatives running on a platform of cutting welfare and taxes by 30 per cent and balancing the budget within five years.

Not all of the world's leading conservative thinkers are focused on economic policy. Others are concerned with the relations between states. One of the best on the foreign-policy side is the Institute for European Defence and Strategic Studies, which continues to argue persuasively for a robust Atlantic Alliance from its modest headquarters in London.

Some of our most challenging work still lies ahead. The first phase of the conservative revolution was the triumph of freedom over Communism. The second phase -- a work still in progress, at least politically -- was the vindication of the free market. The third phase will be the mopping-up exercise, as we try to clear the debris left behind by the 60-year rampage of the welfare state.