In her speech at Reform's anniversary, party leader Kallas focuses on future

TALLINN - In her speech on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the Reform Party on Thursday, the party's leader Kaja Kallas focused on the party's future, specifically highlighting the topic of the environment.

"Those who have children or young people at home know already for long what is the thing that they are truly concerned about. To those who have no children I can say that this is concern about our environment. The bad thing is that there actually is no good liberal solution for climate topics," Kallas said. 

She said that where the liberal solution seems to be to let the economy work on its own, that may not be sustainable from the viewpoint of the people and the living environment. 

"We hear simplistic calls to the effect that climate goals require from us saying goodbye to our present amenities of life. Just as if people had to fully give up cars, heated dwellings, travel, eating meat," she said.

According to Kallas, responsible consumption of course is the right direction to take.

"Rather than imposing new restrictions, we must invest in future economy instead, which enables an increase in the quality of living. In my opinion Estonia should see an opportunity in climate neutrality to raise the competitiveness of our economy through clean and thereby cleaner energy, conclusively abandon oil shale electricity and invest in sustainable transport and living environment. Estonia has been ahead of its time developing the digital state. For that we needed bold decisions and prompt reaction to the changes taking place in the world around us. Let us imagine Estonia having dragged its feet on developing the e-state back then and finding reasons for not doing it," Kallas said.

"Climate policy will be the next trigger of big changes. Let us take the bull by the horns just like we did when we decided to build up an e-state. Let us move forward and invest in the competitiveness of Estonia through new entrepreneurship opportunities, through clean energy, through functioning public transport, through sustainable homes, through diverse mobility options," the leader of the largest Estonian opposition party added.