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Ahem...about last year

Tom Standage: editor, The World in 2021

How did our forecasts for 2020 pan out?

For us and for other future-gazers, 2020 was a chastening experience

WELL, WE DIDN’T see that coming. Like almost everyone else, we were blindsided by
the outbreak of covid-19, the first cases of which were identified in December 2019. As
well as causing death and hardship around the world, and the delay or cancellation of
events large and small, one of the pandemic’s less important side-effects was to
invalidate most predictions for 2020, including our own.

We expected a global slowdown, but not the biggest economic contraction since the
Depression. We anticipated continuing Sino-American tensions over Chinese exports,
but not of the viral variety. We looked forward to action to reduce greenhouse-gas
emissions, but not an 8% annual reduction, the largest since the second world war, as
the pandemic throttled transport and industrial activity.

That said, we got a few things right about events that took place before covid-19 went
global. Donald Trump was, as expected, impeached but not convicted by the Senate. Tsai