I saw 3 interesting diagrams on Wikipedia that basically tell a big part of the story.

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_di...
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nomi...
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population

Turns out that the 3 countries who make up for the biggest share in greenhouse emissions are:

* China
* The United States
* India

Moreover, this graph (a) tells you that the U.S. has the highest C02 emissions per capita whereas India has the lowest CO2 emissions per capita in 2017. Way lower then many developed countries such as the EU28. A Chinese individual have emitted less then a German or South-Korean citizen in 2017.

(1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_di...

The bigger story is in the 3rd graph: population per country as part of global population:

* China: 18.1%
* India: 17.5%
* U.S.: 4.24%

Every other country below the top-8 only constitutes less then 2% of the global population.

Now, you can draw a few quick conclusions from that.

The total energy consumption in China is far less driven by individual consumption, but is more a factor of the total population. Lots of small consumers drive consumption towards a heck of a big number. Coal is the obvious answer as far as the Chinese are concerned because it provides a cost efficient way of scaling energy production to cater to 18.1% of the World's population.

Moreover, China isn't a particular rich country if you simplify things and use GDP per capita as a metric. Most of the people are relatively poor by Western standards, so their footprint in terms of how they live and consume isn't anywhere near what it is in Europe or North America.

You'd see the exact same dynamic at play in India.

As far as China and India are concerned, they will keep preferring coal unless clean solutions that could cater to the same vast demands become equally or more cost effective and scalable such that they can easily replace coal.

Then there's the U.S. with only 4.24% of the world's population, it manages to end up in the top-3 of most polluting countries, right after China and before India. Moreover, an American seems to have emitted twice the amount of CO2 as a Chinese person did in 2017. And finally, Americans are part of the top 10 richest individuals in the world if you look at GDP per capita.

Here you're looking at a different problem: individual consumption rather then total population. Whereas China and India can't readily reduce energy consumption because of their large population, the U.S. can easily reduce it's huge dependency on energy if individual consumption can be radically reduced.

The big hurdle here is that the biggest consumers of energy are those that fear they will have the most to lose: quality of life through existing conveniences and affordances that they feel will go away because they aren't sustainable. At this point, the whole debate often turns emotional and ends up in yak shaving or bike shedding.

The only other pathway for the U.S is similar to China and India: find a cost effective clean source of energy that can easily replace fossil fuels such as coal.

I would put this moral conundrum in front of you: If drastically cutting back emissions through a better management of personal consumption is clearly within your power and can be achieved today; then why refrain from doing so and passing on the responsibility to energy producers?

This doesn't just apply to the U.S. but to any country with significant CO2 emissions per capita, but it needs to be pointed out that countries with a small fraction of the global population with a high CO2 emission number per capita are those that can and will have the biggest impact on the problem, which contrasts seriously with countries in the opposite situation.

Of course, I understand that my whole expose ignores many, many other complexities that affect the balances such as global emission trade, global transportation and global trade (import/export).

My main point was to demonstrate why seemingly irrational decisions elsewhere in the world - such as investing in even more coal-based power plants - are driven by very different regional economics; and that battle cries such as "reduce carbon dependency" are blanket statements you can't impose everywhere in the world without adjusting it's meaning to the local or regional context.