First, the West and particularly the US are still well ahead of China regarding both historical total emissions and per-capita annual emissions. And regardless of what China does in the future we still need to get our acts together domestically.
Also, China is aggressively pushing low-carbon energy sources on all fronts. Where they are now is not necessarily an indication of where they will be in a decade or two.
A large part of their emissions is the result of stuff they make for us. If we are serious about climate policy, we have to set up trade barriers proportional to greenhouse gases emissions to limit this effect. These policies must be informed by climate science.
Finally, regardless of what the rest of the world does, mitigation depends only on us and how well prepared we are.
Really, there is absolutely no scenario in which it is not a good idea to understand what the hell is going on with our climate.
Consumption economies can incentivize production economies to emit less.
The reality is that China is aggressively pushing solar and electric vehicles, and the West is complaining about it. Meanwhile the current US president's maxim is "drill baby drill".
I mean, if we don't need to stick to facts, let's discuss the hypothetical scenario where I am a powerful wizard, and when I say a magic word and I can halve the total amount of CO2 in the atmosphere?
OK, now where's my Nobel peace prize dammit??
At the same time, the US is the main force fighting against carbon neutrality, renewable energy and pretty much anything reasonable. By directly burning a lot of fossil fuels and by lobbying and poisoning discourse in other countries.
Meanwhile China is by far the biggest producer of anything related to renewable energies and installing more renewable energy than the rest of the world, by far.
If anything, the work done worldwide does no matter (it still does though) because USA is doing their best to destroy the planet.
So if developed countries completely eliminate all pollution we will reduce it by 30%. Good. Then what is the next step? War with China? Attack India?
[1] https://www.iea.org/reports/global-energy-review-2025/co2-em...
To the extent that they need a nudge, a carbon tax would be very effective for correcting export market incentives, too.
Nnobody is going to follow a hypocrite, and no one in east asia is gonna cut back on consumption/growth/lifestyle if rich westerners can't even pretend to put in some token effort for the same cause.
Solr and wind power is arguably a huge success story (looking at china specifically) because it was arguably enabled and triggered by western efforts in research, development and commercialization.
