We say, on the basis of our national focus-group report, that college students in the United States are hungry for political conversations that are authentic, involve diverse views and are free of manipulation and ‘spin.'” That finding can provoke a skeptical response, as follows: Young people say they don’t like the national political debate, but they have naive and unrealistic standards. The standard tactics of communication (such as negative political ads) work with young people; thus we should discount their distaste for political rhetoric.

I’d like to break this issue into parts. What are young people against?

1. Partisanship: Almost half of our sample said they were Independents. I recall none who spoke up for the value of parties. A Princeton student explains, “I’m trying to figure out what’s right, what’s wrong, what’s ethically acceptable, and pulling my views from so many different places, it’s hard to put myself into one particular party.” I’d say: This response is understandable, especially given how badly our actual parties behave. However, parties play an essential role; it is good for them to compete; and we need people to devote care and attention to the party of their choice, albeit not at the expense of the common good.

2. Conflict: No one likes it, but it’s inevitable. Suppressing it can be dangerous. Our sample actually agreed with this. About one quarter said, “the political system is filled with unnecessary conflict,” but 39 percent said, “there are so many competing groups in politics that conflict is unavoidable.”

3. Negativity: The students don’t like negative campaigning, but negative campaigning works. What to make of that? One answer is that some harshly critical discourse is valuable, yet the overall balance (in both the paid and unpaid media) is too critical–yet there’s not much we can do about that, except to build good news organs that strive for an appropriate balance.

4. Spin and manipulation: Here’s where I think the kids are saying something novel and important. They are the objects of unprecedented efforts to persuade them–powerful entities hire professionals to get them to buy stuff, to vote, to believe one side or another. These efforts are extremely sophisticated and often effective. But there is a brewing backlash against the whole idea of sophisticated mass persuasion. Most individuals see no alternative except to tune out completely. Still, there is an appetite for genuinely open-ended, diverse conversations in which most participants don’t have a predetermined agenda.

When we were in Paris last week, I wondered what’s behind the facades of the big buildings that line the boulevards. The reason I wondered is that most of the blocks of Paris are oblongs or triangles formed of large buildings, with no breaks for visible alleys. A triangle leaves a lot of space near the middle–in contrast, for example, to the narrow rectangular blocks of Manhattan. If you fill a triangle with buildings, no light will reach most of the interior–especially near the middle of each block, where the shape is widest.

Thanks to Google Earth, one can see what is going on from above. The picture to the left shows the block where my wife and I stayed last week. Like most of the blocks of the Right Bank, it is actually filled with trees. Paris is a much greener city than you can tell by walking its streets, but half of the green is private and hidden behind the lovely stone facades.

(In Cambridge) I’ve been blogging since early in ’03, and I didn’t used to have much company in the civic field. But I’m very happy to say that there are now several active and well-established civic blogs:

Cindy Gibson’s CitizenPost consists of provocative mini-essays (with apt illustrations).

The Study Circles Resource Center has Democracy Space, with regular news and analysis.

The Center for Democracy and Citizenship at the University of Minnesota has unveiled its new By the People blog, mostly devoted to the Center’s own civic activity.

Mike Weiksner’s Connected Conversations bridges technology, deliberation, and civic engagement.

The Democracy Movement is a group blog devoted to public deliberation and related topics, with good mini-essays.

Smart Communities is Suzanne Morse’s very substantive blog, based mainly on her important projects that get citizens involved in addressing crucial issues.

Redeeming Hope presents Rich Harwood’s thoughtful reflections on current issues from a civic perspective.

And coming soon: the Mobilize.org blog.

(In Cambridge, Mass.) I presume that human beings are causing the world to warm by burning carbon fuels. I know this the same way I know that evolution occurred, that the earth goes around the sun, and that Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare — not from direct personal experimentation or a deep immersion in the scholarly literature, but basically because I trust certain institutions, such as major newspapers and universities.

Still, this premise permits at least three responses:

1. The damage from global warming will be very serious, but it could still be tangibly mitigated if we cut carbon emissions. Individuals do not have to pay when they damage the planet by burning carbon. Therefore, they have an incentive to burn carbon as long as the benefit exceeds the price of the coal or oil that they consume. The only way to reduce emissions substantially is to tax carbon on a global scale. (Cap-and-trade systems, by the way, are simply efficient taxes.)

2. Although the previous point is partly true, it’s also true that people want to cut the cost of the fuel they burn. If we invested heavily in technology that increased fuel efficiency, people would happily buy and use that technology. Subsidies for efficiency can at least partly replace taxes.

3. The cost of reducing carbon emissions will be enormous, and the payoff will be unsatisfactory. The world will be worse off as it grows warmer, yet the marginal benefits of money we invest in reducing emissions are too small to matter. It is more efficient to mitigate the damage by, for example, allowing Chinese factories to burn as much coal as they like but protecting Bangladesh from floods.

I lean toward response #1 for reasons of temperament and ideology. (I am cautious and tolerant of state action). But it would be wrong to presume that response #1 is the only morally acceptable one–it all depends on the facts.

The November Fifth Coalition–an assemblage of organizations and individuals devoted to civic renewal in America–has a new statement on its website. The statement will become a petition that people can sign and thereby join an email list for the Coalition. At this stage, it’s not quite ready for electronic signatures, but comments are welcome.

We also have a Facebook page.