I think it's because some Nations with higher per-capita emmissions (like Qatar) are teensy and can't do much about their heavy outputs (desalination, aircon take a lot of energy). The US is huge, is visible on the top per-capita list and is also the 2nd largest emitter overall. Given that the US is a first world economy, is extremely consumerist and has a love affair with gas-guzzling cars, it's likely that by simply making better choices, the US could likely cut more % per-capita than Qatar. And given their size, that would have impact on a global scale.
Americans are singled out because of two reasons: the fact that north-Americans [1] like the authors of this piece are incredibly north-America centred and consider north-America and northern-Americans the centre of the universe. Add to this the fact that self-flagellation is seen as a virtuous act in liberal western societies like those in the USA and Canada while criticising other countries and cultures is seen as offensive, especially when the criticism centres around those other cultures developing habits which the west is being criticised for - e.g. increased mobility, increased resource use. This is counterproductive since it exacerbates the problems caused by those habits - e.g. China building hundreds of coal-powered power stations - while it would have been possible to forestall this by developing viable [1] alternatives and making the technology available to those countries which do not have the resources to develop these by themselves.
[1] viable as in providing the same benefits while reducing or eliminating the negative aspects, e.g. nuclear instead of coal-fired power stations
I think that's not true. Qatar leads the list (and Kuwait, Oman, UAE are also up there), and countries like Canada, Australia are also ahead of the US (I imagine in part b/c of heating and cooling?).
That basically blames US consumers for Chinese policy and environmental practices - how is a US consumer going to force China to stop using coal powerplants?
The choice/substitution argument doesn’t work when there are no practical alternatives. This is why climate change and pollution are not individual choices, but a global imperative. Anything short of global coordinated action to mitigate won’t work (and won’t be enough). What individuals can do is put pressure on their officials and buy sensibly when choice is there.
Do you have a reference to a list which does that calculation?
All the other states at the to of that carbon per capita list also seem like they're highly dependent on imports, possibly more than the US, so I'd expect that many of the factors you describe also apply to them. The gulf states also have to get their phones from abroad.