If somebody does pollution for a while how in the world would that make them ineligible from being the leader in the future technologies that stop the pollution?

I am not following your logic or point here. The US has been the leading polluter, would that somehow stop us from saving the world from pollute if we came up with the technology for the rest of the world to stop polluting? Of course not. It's a very strange whataboutism that you are purveying that gets repeated frequently in online forums, but doesn't stand up to a little bit of back-and-forth.