I won't comment on your other points, which need citations to be discussed properly, but ... > I also know for a fact that other countries are much worse offen

I won't comment on your other points, which need citations to be discussed properly, but ... > I also know for a fact that other countries are much worse offenders when it comes to Carbon emissions and pollution in general, compared to the US or any other Western nation. The problem is that this is a tragedy of the commons situation. For every individual actor, taking action is detrimental because the cost is paid by the individual but the benefit is broadly distributed over all actors. Tragedy of the commons type situations can be overcome by some sort of binding legal framework. This is why no one is proposing for any single country to solve the problem alone, but rather to coordinate internationally. As a side point, morally speaking western nations have a particular responsibility because they are the ones who caused most of the increase in CO2 levels since industrialization. True, China is the biggest emitter now, but that is a fairly recent development.