Inspired by this article in the NY Times (free link) titled "China Is the Adult in the Room on Climate Now," and this comment complaining that China burns more coal than the rest of the world combined, I did a little calculating.
From ChatGPT and Grok I obtained this data:
So yes, China's per capita coal consumption is 3.5 t to the US's 1.0 t.
But China's per capita CO2e emissions for 2024 were 11.2 t
CO2e compared to the US's 15.7 t CO2e.
So it's hard to complain. Yes, China emits 3.0 times more CO2e than the US, but they have a much larger population. They're a much older country. When the US has been around 4,000 years it too could well have a population of 1.4 billion people.
Of course the US won't be around in 4,000 years. It might not be here next Wednesday. But if anyone can make it another 4,000 years it's probably China.
If, today, the US had China's population it would emit 22.1 Gt CO2e. That's 6.3 Gt CO2e more than China emits now. That's 118% of US emissions.
118%.
Naturally the planet doesn't care about our silly national boundaries, but the fact is the climate would be better off if the US emitted like China and not like it does now.
If the US emitted like China its emissions would be 3.8 Gt CO2e, 29% lower than they are. Globally emissions would be roughly 4% lower.
{I thought that last number would be bigger. CC really is a wicked problem.}