Take your argument to its logical conclusion and maybe you'll see the contradiction: Qatar has the worst CO2 emissions per capita, so clearly that's where you should focus your efforts.
> Also, new nuclear, hydro, solar, and wind are not competitive with already built coal or natural gas power plants [...] costs
While this is completely true, if you stick to financial justification for changes, you aren't going to succeed anywhere. If any of the other methods were more cost effective in the short term, they'd already have switched.
I doubt it's fruitful to talk about any of this. You seem pretty certain you're right, and I doubt I could change your mind on anything.
> Qatar has the worst CO2 emissions per capita, so clearly that's where you should focus your efforts.
That's not what I'm arguing. I'm arguing that no one country, or even small group of countries, can stop climate change alone, at least not without causing massive harm to their citizens. The entire world needs to participate, and countries that are producing the most GHG for the least amount of people need to do so most of all (though of course once you get to really really small countries, say Luxembourg, other factors become dominant).
My point is that India, particularly, can't realistically reduce emissions (without harming their citizens tremendously in the short term) by more than a few percents. Meanwhile, Europe, the Middle Eastern oil states, Russia, and the USA have much more room to reduce their emissions more drastically, and, combined, they will have a bigger effect, with much less harm to their own people. China absolutely needs to do more as well, and for them in particular green energy generation is lower hanging fruit (since so much of their emissions are coming from this).
The goal of this whole thing is to move as fast as possible to ensure the planet remains livable 100 years from now, without sacrificing poor peasants' already meager lifestyles in China and India (and anywhere else) today.
And now sure, an argument could be made that rather than building nucelar reactors in France, French money could be better invested in building nuclear reactors in China - that is, that the world's limited capacity for building green energy should be best invested in the places that need power the most while currently having the worst way of getting it. I would be amenable to such an argument, though I think it's more utopic than my previous ones.
> Also, new nuclear, hydro, solar, and wind are not competitive with already built coal or natural gas power plants [...] costs
While this is completely true, if you stick to financial justification for changes, you aren't going to succeed anywhere. If any of the other methods were more cost effective in the short term, they'd already have switched.
I doubt it's fruitful to talk about any of this. You seem pretty certain you're right, and I doubt I could change your mind on anything.