Elana Schor writes up a new survey of international transit usage:

Sadly, only one nation can boast that a majority of its population rides transit at least once a day… the surprising answer comes after the jump.

Russia ranked the highest on the Greendex scale, with 52 percent of respondents reporting daily or near-daily use of transit. Hot on its heels was China, where 43 percent reported very frequent transit rides. More than four out of five Chinese surveyed ride transit at least once a month, according to the Greendex.

I wasn’t surprised by this, Russia has excellent public transportation and a highly urbanized population. The Moscow Metro is absolutely lovely, and the Nizhny Novgorod Metro is pretty good, too, and at least when I was there Nizhny also had a good system of streetcars and trolleybuses.

And when you think about it, none of this should be that surprising. Without real market prices, the Soviet Union was horrible at producing mass market consumer goods. But when it comes to things for which there is no real free market, Soviet production was fine. Soviet nuclear missiles, fighter planes, etc. were just fine. That’s why the USSR wound up falling apart over popular discontent rather than an inability to militarily deter the west. Cars, of course, are a consumer good. But there’s no free market in subway systems. So the Soviet Union had crappy cars but great subways, which led to transit-oriented lifestyles, and that legacy continues today.

In a pretty unexpected development, the Obama administration is tapping Utah Governor Jon Huntsman to be America’s ambassador to China. One’s thoughts, naturally, flow initially to the domestic politics as Huntsman was one of a relatively small number of prominent Republicans to have avoided a turn to the far-right over the past 12 months and seemed like the guy many progressives thought could best put a politically credible mainstream face on conservatism.

In these terms, though, I think the most interesting calculation isn’t Obama’s but Huntsman’s. You’ve got to figure that Huntsman’s decided that he couldn’t possible win a presidential primary, so he’ll take the gig.

Huntsman, meanwhile, seems very well-qualified. He’s been US Ambassador to Singapore and US Deputy Trade Representative and he speaks Mandarin fluently. The United States isn’t always so good about picking diplomats with meaningful regional and linguistic background in the area they’re supposed to work in, and I tend to favor any break with that trend. Picking a Republican also signifies that for all the problems with the Bush-era foreign policy, the Obama administration recognizes that US-China relations stayed on an even keel and there’s bipartisan commitment to the idea of a constructive, cooperative Sino-American relationship.

The atmosphere is a global phenomenon, so controlling climate pollution is a global issue that requires a global solution. That means China needs to be part of the solution. But currently, the Chinese policy framework is pointing in a very different direction. That leads Paul Krugman to advocate a punitive carbon tariff on Chinese goods to bring them to heel.

I think it’s fine to have something along these lines in the mix of discussions to try to bring them along, but I think this is a pretty unsound conclusion. In reaching this, I think one advantage I have over Krugman is that I’ve never been to China and have never discussed this matter with any Chinese policymakers or business figures. Krugman has and has reached the conclusion based on those discussions that China will never come around voluntarily. James Fallows has also talked to Chinese people and says they tell him something different. I’ve talked to various people who’ve talked to Chinese officials, and the things they say vary. Being personally ignorant, it’s easy for me to adopt the meta-rational stance and conclude that the state of Chinese thinking about this issue is unclear and probably somewhat conflicted.

The bottom line about the international aspects of climate change is that the very idea of an effective response assumes the existence of a generally cooperative international environment. It doesn’t assume the non-existence of the odd “rogue” state here or there, but it assumes the absence of any kind of serious great power rivalries. Not just China, but also India and probably Russia, Brazil, and Indonesia as well are going to need to cooperate in a serious way with the OECD nations on this. And I just don’t see how you’re going to get where you need to get through coercion. If anything, I think attempted economic coercion of China is more likely to wind up breaking down solidarity between the US, EU, and Japan than anything else. First, we impose our carbon tariff. Then suddenly Airbus and European car companies are getting all kinds of sales because the EU hasn’t followed suit. Now not only are the Chinese mad at us, we’re mad at the Europeans. Optimistically, at this point everyone decides coercion is unworkable and we start to back away.

Tyler Cowen says we should remember “this problem is really bad and that means a lot of what we are tempted to do could make it even worse.”

Tom Ricks reports that “General Odierno’s objections to the timing of the release of a new round of photos of detainees being abused in Iraq were decisive” in Barack Obama’s decision to flip-flop. He remarks:

I wasn’t so taken aback in February when he went along with his generals and abandoned his campaign promise to withdraw a brigade a month from Iraq this year, and instead endorsed a plan that kept troop levels there pretty steady this year. But to get rolled twice — well, he must think he is running up some pretty big chits with them. I know he is trying to do the right thing but at some point he is going to have to say, My way or the highway.

I think you can probably put slow-walking change on Don’t Ask Don’t Tell in the same box. But is Obama really going to have to say something like that at some point? Realistically, the political damage to a Democratic President of off-the-record grousing by the brass could be large. With major health care and energy reforms live in congress, I think generals will be getting things “their way” for a while yet.