This is the exact same argument as "well if you advocate for higher taxes, why don't you voluntarily donate more money to the government?" It's a dumb argument in that context and still a dumb argument in this one.
The key part of shared sacrifice is that it's shared.
People pretend there's some magic bullet here, but there just isn't. No coordinated action on climate change is possible, no one wants to move on this to the detriment of themselves or their own citizens. The only realistic fix is a technological one, we need cheap, clean power, carbon capture or some combination thereof. Anything short of that and we're still burning this thing to the ground, no matter what any one individual or even collective country does.
Seeing strong environmentalist people choose natural gas kitchens and heating in a region that's 98% carbon-free from hydro, wind, and nuclear is a shame. They then also fail to push politicians on pricing the externalities of natural gas because they are personally invested in it being "clean burning" (which it is, but it's still super high carbon).
Collective action begins with personal understanding. If you skip this step, you get lots of large efforts to ban straws and plastic bags or to sue energy service companies while failing to pass carbon legislation. How is it the fossil energy service company's fault that people use fossil fuel all day to commute across town?
The next step to realize is that, in the US, our “shared CO2 budget” is zero, possibly negative, in light of continued development in China, India, and Africa. Imagine how much CO2 emissions could be reduced if everyone in the US became vegan tomorrow. Now, realize that Chinese development in last year alone went up by enough to offset the entirety of that hypothetical savings.
Why “should I make my lifestyle worse” when development in India, China, and Africa is going to increase global CO2 output by multiples of the entire output of the US and EU combined?
This is a global problem, and it requires global action to have any hope.
For what it's worth, I think the risk of Chinese and Indian pollution is overstated. At least the Chinese government accepts that climate change is a real threat (unlike the current US administration) and is moving (too slowly, but still) in the right policy direction.
Agree about wealth transfer to developing nations, and honestly I'd also love to see IP transfer. Developing nations have the right to the same life-saving and life-improving technologies the West enjoys, but they also have the opportunity to leap-frog and skip the high-carbon-footprint parts, the way they did with phones (skipping landlines and going straight to cellular). We should at least strongly encourage them to do that leapfrogging - though preferably by subsidizing it instead of threatening war.
The next couple generations are in for a rough, rough ride.
Your point about IP transfer is a good one.
China currently has so many coal plants under construction that their output exceed’s the US coal industry’s entire output. China’s goal is to have 20% EVs in the consumer vehicles market by 2025. That means China will put 100 million new ICE vehicles on the road over the next 5 years, and will continue to put tens of millions of additional ICE vehicles on the road each year after that. China is building whole new cities. Construction releases enormous amounts of CO2. Construction releases so much CO2 that a fancy new LEED building takes decades to pay off its construction footprint with energy savings. From 2000 to 2015, China added over 6 gigatons of CO2 output. That’s more than the entire US. In 2017, China added 120 megatons of CO2 output while the US cut 40 megatons.
Because you are already producing 10x [1] the amount of CO2 that a person in India is.
[1] https://www.ucsusa.org/global-warming/science-and-impacts/sc...