Arguments and no action will make world miss 1.5 C bus

"Global emissions are not in line with modeled global mitigation pathways consistent with the temperature goal of the Paris Agreement, and there is a rapidly narrowing window to raise ambition and implement existing commitments in order to limit warming to 1.5 C above pre-industrial levels."

That's the warning the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change issued recently. Despite global efforts in the past seven years to cut carbon emissions and meet the most basic 1.5 Centigrade goal by 2030, the world is still missing the emissions goal by 20.3-23.9 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent.

In other words, so much carbon dioxide has been emitted into the atmosphere over the past several centuries that global warming is going on undeterred; recent efforts to cut emissions have at most slowed it down, but not stopped it. This is also because various parties to the problem are still arguing about their interests and share in the global emissions-cutting mechanism.

That some key clauses of the Paris Agreement, such as the one about nationally determined contributions, are voluntary instead of legally binding best explains the bottlenecks, and the 20-billion-ton gap in meeting emissions goals, as the signing parties can well refuse to work toward meeting the goal.

One of the main obstacles comes from developed nations. Despite so many official reports confirming that developed nations account for a lion's share of global carbon emissions — 95 percent from the Industrial Revolution to 1950 and 77 percent from 1950 to 2000 — certain developed nations still politicize the issue by imposing an undeserved duty upon developing nations such as China.

Who should cut down carbon emission by how much and who should pay how much in compensation is a major problem that the UN Climate Change Conference (COP 21) in Paris failed to address and the "rapidly narrowing window" now is a result of that failure. Maybe developed nations need to listen to their own researchers. A Leeds University research team's research report published in Nature Sustainability in June said industrialized nations responsible for excessive levels of carbon emissions "could be liable for $170 trillion in compensation by 2050 to ensure climate change targets are met".

What is required is not arguments and empty talk, but action.