"big number bad" isn't a great way of analysing the data, because China has a massively larger population.
The US emits 49% more CO2 per capita than China. And even with the much larger rate of increase, 0.79% to US' 0.3%, it'll still require 81 years to catch up to the US per capita rate [0].
The US aren't the good guys here, not by any means. Compared to my country, for instance, the US' emissions are 3x per capita that of the UK. If you want to argue that we shouldn't be using per capita (although we absolutely should), then that's 45x the UK's CO2 emissions.
The US emits 49% more CO2 per capita than China. And even with the much larger rate of increase, 0.79% to US' 0.3%, it'll still require 81 years to catch up to the US per capita rate [0].
The US aren't the good guys here, not by any means. Compared to my country, for instance, the US' emissions are 3x per capita that of the UK. If you want to argue that we shouldn't be using per capita (although we absolutely should), then that's 45x the UK's CO2 emissions.
[0] log(13.59/9.13) / log(1.0049) = 81.4 years