How Jacinda Ardern Sees Everyone as a Player in the Climate Fight

Jacinda Ardern, former Prime Minister of New Zealand, is prioritizing optimism in the movement to combat the climate crisis—as well as expectation for leaders to do their jobs. If we resign ourselves to destruction, she says, politicians will never act to prioritize sustainability and reversing the effects of climate change.

“I have an expectation bias,” the 44-year-old said during a panel, moderated by TIME Editor in Chief Sam Jacobs, at the inaugural Climate Leadership Forum in New York City on Monday. “I expect politicians to do their job, I expect policymakers too, and I expect private institutions as well. We all have to maintain our expectation bias.”

Under Ardern’s leadership from 2017 to 2023, New Zealand introduced a Zero Carbon Act, and she established an independent Climate Commission as well as the Centre for Climate Action on Agricultural Emissions. She also chaired her government’s cross agency board on climate change, producing the nation’s first Emissions Reduction Plan. 

Ardern noted that, though New Zealand is a small nation with just 5 million people, no contribution is insignificant to the climate movement. She spoke about her trip to Antarctica, where climate change is felt more intensely than other parts of the Earth and where she says she got a “physical picture” of the magnitude of destruction. The trip also reified her commitment to protecting marine areas and preserving the ecology of ecosystems like that of Antarctica.

When asked about prioritizing innovation in the climate sphere, Ardern said that she “cannot understand why we still have the existence of” fossil fuel subsidies—a remark that was met with applause from the crowd. 

“$7 trillion is going into subsidizing what is, of course, you know, a major contributor [to the] situation we find ourselves in, but you know, at the same time could be an investment that would see an incentivizing and accelerating [of] renewable uptake,” Ardern said. 

She spoke to Jacobs and the crowd about her perspective as both an insider to politics—well-versed in the ways that the public can criticize the rate of change in governments—and an outsider, to U.S. politics in particular.

“If we think about the climate, environment as being the playing field, the government can adjust the rules of the game … but they are not the only players on the field,” Ardern said. “The private sector are right out there, either waiting on the sidelines … or, in some cases, increasingly, out on the field themselves. So are our citizens. We all have a part to play. Let’s keep dragging the government with us to make sure that it’s a high scoring game.”

On U.S. politics, Ardern joked about her inability to provide perspective in just two minutes, but she noted that some have seen similarities between her situation and that of Vice President Kamala Harris—both were thrust into leadership roles of their respective liberal parties when an older counterpart tapped out and nominated them.

“I think one of my observations is the United States is not alone in this. There is a sense that the world, particularly Western liberal democracies, feels polarized at present, hyper-partisan. And that does not always feel like the kind of environment where you can make progress on existential crises like climate change,” Ardern said. But, she noted, multiple surveys, including that by the United Nations Development Programme, show that the majority of people want their government to take stronger action to tackle the climate crisis. 

The consumer wants change, she argued.

“I think one of the things we confuse is that for a long time, we’ve told voters that climate change is going to cost them money,” Ardern said. “It is a false economy. Doing nothing is going to come at the expense of consumers. … If we as politicians want to remain focused on improving the lives of our citizens, that all points to climate action.”

The TIME100 Climate Leadership Forum was presented by American Family Insurance, Cisco, Dow Packaging & Specialty Plastics, Fortescue, Iberdola, L'Oréal Groupe, Siemens, and GSK.