Hopes fade of reaching 2-degree limit

The UN's Paris climate conference, designed to reach a plan for curbing global warming, may instead become the graveyard for its defining goal: stopping temperatures rising more than 2 degrees C above preindustrial levels.

Achieving the 2-degree target has been the driving force for climate negotiators and scientists, who say it is the limit beyond which the world will suffer ever-worsening floods, droughts, storms and rising seas.

Topping the agenda is how to trim a sprawling draft text into something manageable