I was always under the impression that the US gets the most negative press about emissions because we have the highest per-capita (no way we were ever going to top China in total emissions lol). However, the US doesn't even appear to be top-10 on the per-capita chart [0], even coming in under some large countries likes Canada and Australia.
There's a bit of a cognitive dissonance here though. The US is the leader of the world and everyone looks to us on how to build their countries. No one wants to admit it but everyone wants to be as good as us. However, when we fail to live up to our reputation, the rest of the world is right to call us out for not living up to our reputation (that, to be fair, we regularly leverage). If you're in the US and you don't want to be criticized, that's fine, but then you can't also claim that the US is the best/strives to be the best.
There's a bit of a cognitive dissonance here though. The US is the leader of the world and everyone looks to us on how to build their countries. No one wants to admit it but everyone wants to be as good as us. However, when we fail to live up to our reputation, the rest of the world is right to call us out for not living up to our reputation (that, to be fair, we regularly leverage). If you're in the US and you don't want to be criticized, that's fine, but then you can't also claim that the US is the best/strives to be the best.
[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_di...