Blaming developing countries for their development and its externalities feels really unfair, whether it's China or someone else. But let's talk about China, since they are the world's largest emitter of CO2.
China is responsible for a bit more than
25% of the world's emissions. They account for roughly 20% of the world's population, so emitting more than their "fair share." There is no question that China should be reducing emissions and imposing regulations. However, are you taking that as a sign they're going full-throttle with emissions? This came out a few months ago:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-04-24/china-enacts-biggest-pollution-curbs-in-25-years.html and this
http://www.forbes.com/sites/jackperkowski/2014/06/17/china-leads-in-renewable-investment-again/
China accounts for 61% of the spending on renewables, worldwide. Do you think that government, full of ENGINEERS (and corruption...), is stupid? Do you think it doesn't understand that, regardless of the state of the world's climate, it needs to find better sources of energy to reduce the crazy pollution on its territory, give a decent quality of life to its citizens, and more importantly, continue growing unrestrained? There might be a debate in a "democratic" country since you need to cater to your uneducated, conservative electoral base, but not in a single party system when people come from STEM backgrounds. China is doing more on that front than anyone else, because they have to, and they know it. They're also polluting the most, but who do you think manufactures all the goods consumed here?
Now as to your argument that changing the situation in China has a bigger effect than trying to change the situation here, look at that table on wiki showing the world's emissions by country. China does 26.43%, the US, 14.14%, and the EU, 13.33%. Add the Western world together, see how we compare. The US has 320M people, or
4.44% of the world. Google tells me the EU has 742M. US + EU together is about 15% of the world's population (vs 19%), generating 27.47% of the CO2 (vs 26.43%). Where do you think is easier to reduce our carbon footprint, in China or here? What does it tell you when 4.44% of the population generates 3x more than their fair share?
I'll leave this for you, too:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L.... Every bit helps, stop blaming other countries and take responsibility as a world leader (unless you're only interested in being a leader in the military and invasion of privacy front, which is what the rest of the world sees).
Now don't even get me started on how many resources are spent on growing meat vs vegetables.