China is also building renewables and nuclear at record pace and their per capita emission is much lower than USA. If we also take historic emission into account (and we should - the CO2 from decades ago is still in atmosphere!) then China still has a lot of budget to catch up with USA. Honestly, the China argument is getting really tiring.

I have always found the American perspective on this subject annoying precisely because of the crazy emissions and consumption per capita in the US.

It feels like US citizens intentionally or not gatekeep wealth, and do nothing policy-wise about the unsustainable consumption patterns besides going to war for oil.

No serious attempt to increase transit ridership, no serious attempt to electrify the automotive industry, no serious attempt to build a domestic renewable energy production pipeline, no serious attempt to curb suburban sprawl, no economic disincentive on single use items like fast food packaging, no serious effort to move public health education toward healthy low carbon diets (less red meat, less dairy from cows), no corporate-level disincentives to waste (e.g., companies throwing out returned items when it’s cheaper), no serious effort to move to high efficiency construction and HVAC practices.

The list goes on and on. In the American perspective other counties like China are at fault for everything despite being the world’s foremost consumer of resources and one of the biggest ideological sticks in the mud for progress.

While they do, 2025 was also the first year that the fraction of coal dropped in both China and India. In india it dropped by 3% and in China by 1.6%. So they build out fossil, but they build out non-coal power faster. China also hopes to peak coal in absolute terms by 2030. That's something at least.

Unfortunately, the environnement doesn't work with percentages but raw emissions

It's a matter of "it could have been worse"

...which is why when comparing countries per capita emissions is the correct measure for deciding which countries are doing a better or worse job of addressing the problem.

Per capita, China and especially India emit far less CO2e than the US.

Whataboutism. The truth is that neither China nor India will ever reach the cumulative emissions of the US, probably by a very large margin. Those who have already put the most CO2 into the atmosphere have the greatest moral responsibility to become CO2-negative yesterday – and to do everything they can to help other, less wealthy countries do likewise.

Your claim doesn’t seem as definitive as you present it, for China and US at least.

Comparing China and the US it seems like theres a 150 billion ton difference in the cumulative emissions.

Most recent data shows China emitting ~8 billion tons more than the US annually. At that rate that’s about ~20yrs until they flip.

China’s emissions appear to increasing exponentially YoY whereas the US has seen reductions in recent years. That makes it seem like they’d flip in less than 20 years.

Obviously, the emissions on a per capita basis are still nowhere close.

From: https://ourworldindata.org/co2-emissions

Does it matter what they do? These are countries that are poorer. We should be eating the cost of reducing our per capita emissions because we are wealthier. Why would you expect the world’s poor to be the ones to shoulder the burden first?