And this is why the US has so much trouble with climate change as an issue- first it was sulfur dioxide, then lead, then CFCs, now it's CO2. The US has been doing this since the 70's. Now Europe and China want to pretend they care with words, and giving the US's money to the third world, yet every picture of a city in China looks like London in the 1890's and it turns out those oh so green Euro car makers were cheating their emissions tests, but that's not important, what's important is that we hold hands and make pleasant noises at each other.
I don't see how anyone who calls themselves an engineer can stomach when this feel good ignorance is put forward as a solution- this is rearranging deck chairs to the highest degree.
Per capita and cumulated are BS measures to obfuscate that China is a bigger contributor, and likely to grow for a while. The first rule of getting out of a hole is to stop digging- the US has, China hasn't.
I fail to see how the very real reduction in sulfur dioxide, lead, and CFCs is "rearranging the deck chairs". We had a problem, and fixed it. We now have another problem.
The Paris Treaty is rearranging the deck chairs. The others were fixed by plugging the hole in the boat. Plenty of US companies and governmental agencies are working on plugging this hole, but the country as a whole is tired of being hit up to pay the orchestra so the the rearranging can continue as before.
India (population 1.3 Billion) creates lesser CO2 emissions than the US
China's per-capita emissions is just around half of that of the US
[Edit: replying to comment about pollution and emissions
The Paris agreement is about climate change and reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
When Trump talks about polluters and withdrawing from the Paris agreement, it seems illogical to suggest that he wasn't referring to CO2 emissions]