Interviewed, edited and titled by Tom Hashemi.

Even the word climate has become almost like a swear word. And net zero is so rarely used nowadays that I can almost forget all the substance behind it and go back to a virgin position: ‘Net zero, what’s that?’ It sounds really bad. 

I believe in the power of words, and from a narrative perspective, maybe we didn’t do very well on the green transition in Europe. We started with very grand goals, and they felt very far away. We emphasized the change part without really saying what the change consisted of.

It’s hard to win that narrative, because the focus goes on how much the change costs. Nobody talks about what it will cost us if we don’t do anything. The forest fires this summer cost Europe something like €180 billion, but it is just a number to people. Whereas if we talk about changing your car, or moving from your car to other modes of transport, that affects me personally. It’s a tough fight.

I see both directions happening at the same time. On the one hand there are the abstract concepts, like climate, which people have a hard time relating to. And on the other hand, issues are being oversimplified, and perhaps social media algorithms are also reinforcing these simplifications and black-and-whitism.

Issues such as climate and migration are difficult issues which are not going to go away. The solutions are never black and white, never simple, never easy. So how do you actually translate these problems and solutions into something tangible that families at home can relate to?

So often we have tended to communicate climate policy through a set of statistics, facts and percentages and abbreviations. But decision-making is influenced by emotions. If you manage to find stories between a problem and the local context, it is always better.

For example, Estonia is a very forest-rich country, and climate change is affecting our forests. We have a new species of these bark bugs that are doing a lot of harm to the forest. Everyone has seen the dry patches of spruce because of them. It’s much easier to explain climate change to people like this, through something they’ve seen with their own eyes, rather than through talking about data or problems far away.

Moralising made climate look like some kind of elitist project. The science behind it is rather that you cannot ‘teach’ people to be sustainable. But if people make a small change in their behaviour—like they start recycling their rubbish—that’s going to make them in general more sustainable. It’s going to make them more prone to understanding that sustainability is something we need to all participate in, and that we need to go to a circular system rather than a linear one. So it’s about creating small behavioural change, rather than moralising.

Lots of climate communications is more about organisations posturing to their peers than trying to change behaviour. If you take big companies who want to do their part, maybe they should instead think about joint action: people who work there changing something small in their daily life. I’m not saying we should ignore the big role of money and power and legislation—obviously that’s really important. But if we’re talking about changing the general perception of whether we should tackle climate change, the behavioural change element is important.

After ten years of being a member of parliament, I have realised that if you think you can rule with only idealism, you are bound to fail. In politics there are always opposing forces, and strong idealism creates a strong counterforce. It is about finding the right pace of development that people can come along with. If they only see your back, it’s not going to happen.

Voters expect a vision from leaders, yes, but at the same time that vision has to resonate. They have to recognise themselves in it; it cannot be too far removed.

Like it or not, the first test of credibility is the people involved with something. Unfortunately, I think human beings work like this; it’s more important who is talking than what’s being said. The next test would be if they’ve actually done anything, if they’ve got some kind of results already, or whether it’s all theoretical. 

It’s all about creating expectations. If you take a field, for example, climate or energy policy, and you start speaking up on it, then you become expected to speak up again. You can also choose which people you are seen with, in what context, and how you are performing: are you at the conferences? Are you in the magazines that talk about these issues? Are you in the jury of the competitions in that space?

Persistence does a lot to create that trust because in a way action creates trust. It can’t be only words: you have to have some kind of action connected to it as well.

I mean, some people go on and on and on, and you’re like ‘what the hell are you actually going on about?’ If somebody can tell me things in a three-minute address and choose three slides to support that address, I will trust them in a way because they have clarity of thought.

I had this situation when I was minister where they came to present this strategy to me. It was 90 slides. I was like, “No. Come back next week. Maximum 12.” Get your thinking in order before you present it to people.

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