"Buy from companies, and countries, that don’t use electricity from coal. Certify with either “Made with Coal Free Electric” or a nice little logo."
US and European consumer buying choices can make a difference.
https://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&...
... and their total emission is already double that of the US. Are you saying China take no action until they achieve parity per capita? I can think of no other reason you would mention “per capita”.
Yes, it would be bad if Chinese per capita use rose to match US per capita use, because US per capita use is already way over what is sustainable globally.
Of course, the West is already on that downward trend and China is soaring upwards with no signs of even plateauing. Within 10 years China will be technologically independent of the West and the West will have even less influence over its environmental policy than we do now.
No one has suggested that. You, however, have suggested that there is no point in the US lowering its emissions because China emits more total than does the US.
The atmosphere does not care about arbitrary political boundaries. There's a total amount of greenhouse gases we can put in it consistent with keeping global warming under any given target. A ton of CO2 from a person in China is the same as a ton of CO2 from a person in the US as far as the atmosphere is concerned.
So if a random person in China being responsible for putting about 8 tons in per year is unacceptable, then by what logic is a random person in the US putting in over 16 tons a year fine? By every physical measure, that US person is doing at least twice the harm to the atmosphere.
The US needs to be the leader on this, not making excuses not to reduce its own emissions.
The reason that per country emissions are important is that countries are convenient political and demographic units.
Flying is relevant because nothing undermines the message more than “you must curtail your lifestyle but I won’t mine”. Exactly how many climate summits have been held over videoconferencing? My employer has massively cut back on flying to meetings, we have a big screen in every meeting room instead, it works pretty well. Meanwhile politicians and celebrities refuse to cut back on private jets. There’s no truer form of climate denial than that!