This is an easy way to make US look like a responsible polluter compared to India and China.
Its a different ball game, if you factor in the total emissions per capita over last 100 years, in which case, US emissions are probably a few multiples over China and India combined (that's my guess. I'm too lazy to calculate these numbers).
Countries won't solve it. If Americans can own up to the fact that per capita reduction in co2 emissions by them, will have a huge effect on co2 emissions in the world (because that means practices/regulations/technology that'll trickle down to largest polluting countries.), then it'll mean genuine difference.
American media has no right to point fingers at countries that has never been among the highest per capita polluters in the world, and has been so historically. Sadly, Americans (those who are into virtue signaling) are too hung up on stuff fed by NYT to realize that they have been polluting the most, and them pontificating to others will help no one.
But my POV (as someone who spend 1/3 of my life in US and rest in India) is that US has huge potential to cut down on unnecessary emissions in terms of HVAC, lighting, using efficient cars, subsidizing public transport systems. Hence I have this huge bias against the energy consumption habits of Americans in the US.
Main problem is that the economy of US and many developed nations run on fuel burning carbon emitting industries (crude oil, car manufacturing, gas/electric utilities, car dealerships selling IC engine cars, HVAC equipment). That is why lobbies in US scuttle any govt moves toward encouraging solar/wind power, electric cars (It's a surprise for me that Tesla has survived this far), public transport systems.
I also agree that emissions as a geo-political entity helps in driving global policies to reduce emissions. But beyond that, if US is not setting an example like recently GM shut down many sedan making plants in US and Canada (and POTUS gives an excuse that he'll get rid of subsidies for GM's electric cars while Americans are moving back to their SUV craze), it's only going to mean tougher choices for India and China to make, with costs born by those citizens, and a price will be paid by the current heads of state in the respective countries because they capitulated to US's pontificating (Eg: Canada PM has a growing anti incumbency for the next round of elections).
India is making the right moves as of now (crazy huge solar fields and alliances, massive investments in public transport infra, LPG and electricity connections / supply to more households etc), but it'll take a decade at least for any of this to materialize into reduced emissions.
(None of this is even factoring the pollution in China because of US's consumption of goods manufactured in China and transported to the US, which gives US kind of a free ticket to pontificate saying they are not the most most polluting country.)
It might be too late now, but the US has set the example & led the way for the rest of the world on certain things for decades. Soft power. We can do it again, but we have to lead from the front.
It's like the debate over water in the West. 80% of water goes to agriculture, so they make the biggest splash and there's no way to cut water usage in half without improving agriculture. But of the 7-20% that goes to residential, half is used on lawns, which is a luxury good. And speaking of lawns, we generate quite a lot of emissions taking care of them.
US per capita: 1000 tons of CO2 per year
China per capita: 1000 tons of CO2 per year.
Looks like China is twice as good. But if you break out population statistics and 500 million of them live in mud huts and produce almost no CO2, then the other half that have moved to US like living conditions produce US like carbon.
https://www.carbonbrief.org/mapped-worlds-largest-co2-import...
The measure you're looking for is carbon intensity of economy. How many tons of CO2 are produced per, say $1000 of economic output.
> But if you break out population statistics and 500 million of them live in mud huts and produce almost no CO2, then the other half that have moved to US like living conditions produce US like carbon.
That's not really indicative of anything other than a wealth disparity, which I'm sure can happen both in high and low per capita polluters.
Also, reducing your population growth rate is a great way to reduce carbon emissions. A world with 500 million people living in luxury is arguably better than one with 15 billion where the living envy the dead.
Though you get to some key points. The most annoying issue is perhaps that China's emissions are largely a result of building crap for rich people in the US and Europe.
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NE.EXP.GNFS.ZS
It's possible but does not seem particularly likely that exports are more than 2.5x as GHG-intensive as the rest of the Chinese economy; that's what would be required for Chinese exports to account for the majority of Chinese GHG emissions.
"They're just giving buyers what they demand" is not a good reason to shift blame from American corporate polluters to the consumers that buy their products. I don't see why export-oriented Chinese corporations should face less criticism for the same pollution. Both the benefits (increased market share) and the detriments (increased pollution) come from the same decisions these companies make about using dirty cheap energy.