By Roger Williamson

In 2015, the world's governments are meant to sign up to a binding climate change agreement and a new set of development goals, to follow on from the Millennium Development Goals.

At the start of each year, the Economist predicts what to expect in the coming 12 months. This year's edition, The World in 2015, finds a few - actually very few - pages to discuss the prospects for the two agreements. [1]

Yet the most instructive parts are the spaces where The Economist owns up to some of its failed predictions from the year before.

Many different people seem to have been the first to warn us about the dangers of making predictions; especially about the future, because - as the joke runs - those are the ones that often go wrong.

One example is Nobel economics laureate Daniel Kahneman, who said: "Economists ... are quite good at explaining what has happened after it has happened, but rarely before." [2]

It is impossible to predict the outcome of climate change negotiations or calculate the odds of their success with mathematical certainty. The future is open and will surprise us. Wild cards often crop up in policymaking and new political constellations emerge.

But spotting those wild cards as they emerge can suggest the direction negotiations are heading in. I want to identify two such developments, and show how science figures within each.

How science's role is understood by big policy players makes a political difference. To say: "Yes, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is giving us yet another 'last chance' to save the planet", as news media often do, decreases the chances of international agreement by fuelling cynicism or, at best, agnosticism. That message suggests: sit on your hands and wait and see. But once the proof is in, that this was indeed the last chance, it will be too late.

There are better ways to use science than to frighten people into learned helplessness. And the two new sources of policy influence that I see illustrate this, while offering hope and momentum.

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