The stated goal of recent international climate negotiations includes keeping global temperatures from rising more than 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial conditions. The Paris climate agreement included emissions limits that everyone recognized would be insufficient to meet that goal, but it was meant to get all countries on the path of controlling their emissions and set the stage for a progressive tightening of standards over time.
Talks going on in Marrakech are the first to take place after the Paris agreement went into force, and the US chose them as the stage to reveal just how much tighter its limits could be.
