I agree that China's emissions are a major concern (much less so for India), but that does not absolve the US' own responsibilities as the second-largest emitter (not to mention its past contributions too). When the US and others have cleaned up their own acts, more pressure can be brought to bear on China to follow suit (though at least it is making a start). To wait for others to act first is Tragedy of the Commons on a global scale.
the massive amount of money necessary for it would be available from the sale of [STEP's] byproduct, elemental coal
I think you're jumping more than a few guns there. The process has only just been experimentally demonstrated, the "elemental coal" of which you speak is a coating of solid carbon on an electrode, and even that needs a reaction temperature of over 750C (which implies significant solar concentration). We know nothing about engineering challenges scaling this up outside the laboratory, or what sort of costs or return it might involve. In fact, most of the attention so far seems to be on producing cement with it (still good for reducing emissions).
It sounds like STEP could one day be a useful part of our energy mix, but it's far from being a magic bullet, and it's certainly not going to attract major investment for a while yet.
All these renewable energies appear to be offered in the form of electricity, and cars do not yet run on that except for some very slippery-through-the-air, very expensive cars that most of us can't afford.
You might want to take another look at the electric car industry; there's rather more there than just Tesla Motors, and much more on the way. Every major manufacturer is working on electric vehicles, and some have been working on hydrogen fuel cell vehicles too (such as this Silverado). Again, we're not talking about turning off the oil today, but phasing it out as electric cars become more widespread (plug-in hybrids are a perfect intermediate stage).
bring industry back to the USA
I'm sure most Americans would agree with you there, but how to do that is not nearly so clear, and is the subject of much debate. Reducing income taxes usually means reducing services too, which many citizens and companies depend on, so it's not a clear-cut answer. Shifting to consumption taxes tends to hit poorer communities hardest, so that's a problem too. Personally I think full automation would be a good approach, but that's a different discussion. In any case, it's at best tangential - from the perspective of CO2, there's little point moving industry back to the US until the US takes a clear lead in reducing its own per-capita emissions.