But don’t panic yet. Cabinet is busy constructing a plan. Here’s a sneak preview of how they are going about it.

Constructing a master plan to deal with a problem of such mammoth proportions as climate change mitigation, is easier said than done: it has to be big enough to match the size of the problem – our ‘elephant’ (introduced in previous columns) that is getting way too big for the ‘room’. The good news is that the Cabinetdriven Long Term Mitigation Scenario (LTMS) process is underway.

Scenarios – typically used to assess strategy options in business – are credible and robust alternative ‘stories’ about essentially uncertain futures. Teams devise these using a number of tools and often give the alternative outcomes cute names, such as ‘Bryan Habana’ for the desirable ones, or ‘Volstruis’ for undesirable ones.