Indicators · Updated weekly
A selective dashboard of the measurements that actually matter — each with direction, scale, and a one-line implication. If it's not on this page, we don't think it changes how you understand the year.
Emissions are flat-to-rising, not falling. The world has added 15% more annual CO₂ since the Paris Agreement was signed in 2015. Current trajectory implies +2.4°C by 2100, not the 1.5°C target.
AI training and inference now consume about 3.2% of global electricity — roughly the power draw of Japan. On current build-out, data centers will exceed 5% by 2027, making them the single fastest-growing load on the grid.
The US alone outspends the next seven countries combined. Global defense outlays are at their highest share of GDP since 1991 — a break from three decades of post–Cold War decline.
Low-carbon sources (hydro, wind, solar, nuclear) now supply more electricity than coal for the first time. Solar alone grew +28% year-over-year and is the fastest-scaling source on record.
Inflation has normalized across most advanced economies, but services prices remain sticky. Central banks are unlikely to cut rates aggressively until core inflation is below 2.5% for two consecutive quarters.
Working-age share (ages 15–64) is the clearest single signal of structural growth potential. India overtook China in 2023 and its demographic window remains open for another two decades. Japan and Korea have already closed theirs.
Frontier training compute has grown roughly 4× per year — an order of magnitude every ~18 months. This pace has held since 2017 and is the reason AI capability gains have not plateaued, despite repeated predictions.
Spot rates have normalized from the 2021 supply-chain peak, but remain ~50% above pre-pandemic averages due to Red Sea rerouting and longer transit times. This feeds roughly 0.3% to global goods prices.
Nearly one in three new cars sold globally is now electric. In China the figure is 52%; in Europe 26%; in the US 11%. The EV share is the single best leading indicator of road-transport emissions over the next decade.
Sales are at an all-time high, driven almost entirely by AI accelerators (GPUs and custom ASICs). Memory and logic excluding AI remain 8% below their 2021 peak — the cycle is narrower than it looks.
Goods trade as a share of GDP peaked in 2022 and has declined in three consecutive years. This is the clearest single signal of "slowbalization" — not a reversal of trade, but a plateau with more regional and less global composition.
Russia and the US together hold 86% of the global stockpile. The most strategically significant trend is not the totals — which are declining from Cold War peaks — but China's rate of increase, roughly +90 warheads per year since 2022.