however considering the uncertainty surrounding climate change projections and applying the precautionary principle setting the target at tco per capita by would ensure a sufficiently high probability that the stabilization target could be achieved jonas and others only the united kingdom has useful numbers of greenhouse gas emissions based on consumption even in advanced countries the practice of picking winning technology is perceived to be unavoidable the important questions would be who should do the picking and how in general policymakers should focus preferably on setting broad political goals rather than on detailed technologyspecific issues strategic longterm planning is essential in order to coordinate actions by many different actors in different parts of the complex interdependent energy system