Government representatives are meeting in Paris to negotiate a new deal to push the world onto a lower-emissions path. They must be presented with strategies that are politically feasible if they are to catalyse significant action — strategies that will constrain costs and deliver benefits to society.

This puts a premium on research that translates science, from all disciplines, into actionable plans. Such research is hard to develop as it requires, among other things, a deep understanding of the policymaking process. Researchers are increasingly realizing the advantages of joining their efforts with policy experts to inform political debates. Scholars must find ways to conduct more of this research, and to develop strategies to disseminate the output to decision makers, if it is to get exposure in international negotiations.

Nature Climate Change has always committed to publishing research designed to inform the policy debate. This is continued with a new joint web focus with Nature Geoscience (http://www.nature.com/nclimate/focus/budgeting-for-climate-change/index.html), exploring how the world's carbon budget is currently being expended, and translating findings into possible routes to transformational change.

For instance, there are several ways to account emissions — this refines but also complicates debates around responsibility. Analysis by Robert Jackson and colleagues suggests that the world could soon hit peak emissions, partially due to a drop in China's coal consumption, and below-average global demand for oil and natural gas alongside the growth of renewable energy (http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nclimate2892). Karl Steininger et al. show how measuring emissions at different points in the supply chain provides different images of countries' contributions (http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nclimate2867). Both pieces demonstrate how debates about burden sharing are (and should be) changing, with the old 'developed versus developing country' dichotomy dissipating.

Despite the upwards emissions curve beginning to bend, it is likely that policymakers across the globe will have to rely on some form of negative emissions technology (NET) to make deeper cuts. In the web focus, Pete Smith and colleagues (http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nclimate2870) look at the biophysical and economic impacts of these technologies, outlining the limitations of such 'silver bullets'. They suggest that a mass rollout of a single NET, or any combination of NETs, will probably be economically difficult to achieve, and could ultimately have a significant impact on some other part of the ecosystem. This makes relying on such technologies a high-risk strategy.

Policymakers look ready to budget for change, both to the climate and to society as it seeks to mitigate and adapt. A research agenda that delivers knowledge to enable action will help them respond.