With COP-25 just around the corner, we are entering the season for reports about how on track, (or how far off it) we are towards meeting global climate goals.

I've been part of writing those reports in the past and believe they serve useful functions like establishing common datasets and projections and perhaps adding a sense of urgency to global deliberations.

But, year after year, these reports tend to say "we've made some progress but there's much further to go.

Which leaves me hungry to know about another gap, I'll call it the 'power to change direction gap'. Think of that as the gap between our current influence on the decisions that determine future emissions and the amount of influence we would need to close the emissions gap.

The 'power to change direction gap' is the one that will close first. Once it closes the emissions gap will follow.

I doubt the report I want is possible, in a literal sense. To write it you'd need to know about some measurable things - size of the climate movement(s), network strength and breadth, views among citizens, power of the vested interests, desperation of the vest interests and more.

You would also have to know about less quantifiable things, like the impact of a work of art or a charismatic new leader, the impact on the collective psyche of rising climate impacts, the amount to which that psychic impact is suppressed vs expressed, and more.

And you'd want to know all of that for countries as different as the US, China, and Brazil.

But, remember this: just because a state of a system variable isn't knowable or quantifiable doesn't mean that it is static.

In fact, when I look around I see lots of evidence that the power to change direction gap is shrinking. Not enough yet, we know that because of the analysis on the emissions gap and the newly reported production gap.

But we have groups of people gathering to share their climate emotions, we have young people striking every week, and catalyzing the largest climate protests in world history,

We have labor and health and climate and justice activists linking up into a common movement and giving life to ideas like a green new deal.

So pay attention to the emissions gap reports, they have important information for us, but also look at changes in your circle of connections since the last round of gap reports a year ago.

Are more people concerned about climate or fewer? Are networks broader or narrower? Are mailing lists and donor lists and volunteer lists growing or shrinking?

Look at your own commitment and passion and motivation, are they rising or falling? After all, you are one element (if only a small one) of the power to change direction.

Look also at your own health and stamina, and to the health of the movements and networks that you belong to. Are they receiving the needed tending and care? How are levels of trust and willingness to risk?

That's because, if you had a systems maps of all of this, beneath the power to change direction you'll find another variable, the power to build the power to change direction, and it is as dynamic as everything else.

The power to build the power to change direction influences the power to change direction which influences decisions about policy and investment which finally, at the end of the chain of causation influences green house gas emissions, aka the emissions gap.

Even if no one is going to hand us a report about these "softer" variables anytime soon, they are real, and they matter. We each contribute to them and we can train ourselves to try to see them, and their trends and changes over time.

To see hints of what the future might hold you want to look where changes will be spotted first, and thats at the beginning of the chain, in all the actions small and large that build the collective ability to steer the system in a different direction.