I think you're ignoring the fact that China is, factually, the leading greenhouse gas emitter.
Your argument has now shifted to focus on consumer demand. Yet, even examination of this angle will reveal that China's state policies create the artificially low prices that fuel that consumption.
The issue isn't simply that "the West buys things." It's that China's government actively engineers this hyper-consumption as the Chinese economic policy.
The CSIS (link below) describes this as a system of "nonmarket policies" and "state-driven overproduction." This is accomplished through massive government subsidies that allow Chinese companies to operate at a loss and "dump" cheap goods onto the global market.
The "unsustainable consumption" you describe is, therefore, a direct response to a market deliberately distorted by China for the sake of its economic ambitions.
Furthermore, the CSIS article explicitly states that these dumping policies support China's "pollution-intensive" and "carbon-intensive" manufacturing.
All this is to show that the problem is not reducible to consumer choice, but more so a deliberate strategy by the Chinese state.
Your argument has now shifted to focus on consumer demand. Yet, even examination of this angle will reveal that China's state policies create the artificially low prices that fuel that consumption.
The issue isn't simply that "the West buys things." It's that China's government actively engineers this hyper-consumption as the Chinese economic policy.
The CSIS (link below) describes this as a system of "nonmarket policies" and "state-driven overproduction." This is accomplished through massive government subsidies that allow Chinese companies to operate at a loss and "dump" cheap goods onto the global market.
The "unsustainable consumption" you describe is, therefore, a direct response to a market deliberately distorted by China for the sake of its economic ambitions.
Furthermore, the CSIS article explicitly states that these dumping policies support China's "pollution-intensive" and "carbon-intensive" manufacturing.
All this is to show that the problem is not reducible to consumer choice, but more so a deliberate strategy by the Chinese state.
https://www.csis.org/analysis/us-steel-and-aluminum-tariffs-...