- I am a lucky person to have been raised in a family
where boys and girls were treated equally,
which was not normal, not the regular thing,
when I grew up.
I had very clear-minded, deliberate parents
who believed in social justice,
who believed in equality between the sexes.
So I grew up taking this for granted
that this is what I will be standing for.
Both my parents were in public service.
I took it for granted.
The question for me was, what profession do I choose?
I mean, I knew I was going to have education,
go to the university like my parents had done.
What would I choose?
Economics, law, health?
So in the end I chose medicine.
Here I am, 35 years old, and I was asked
to come to the Prime Minister's office one day.
He asked me to enter the cabinet, the government.
I was shocked.
I had no such plan.
He had seen me write articles in the press.
I asked, "As what?"
I was thinking, "I hope it's health minister."
He said, "No, as environment minister,
"because I don't want my government ministers
"to serve in their own professional capacity."
It took a day, I guess, before I realized
environmental policies are public health policies
for people at large.
It's really the same thing.
We don't take care of nature only because we love the birds,
but we do it because it's best for humanity.
- You were the head of the World Health Organization,
your position, and clearly you lead the global effort
on preventative care.
The central question, it seems, is whether or not
you believe that carbon dioxide is causing
global warming. - It is causing,
it is causing global warming, no doubt at all,
and in fact, just speaking from my experience
and from my time as Norwegian Prime Minister,
I mean, we shocked the world, especially the Gulf
and the other oil-producing states,
when we introduced a CO2 tax already in 1990.
And what has happened after that?
Our continental shelf has only one-third of the emissions
of the global average.
Why, because we introduced the CO2 tax
that made it an inspiration and incentive
for the oil industry to make changes.
It has happened that people have been describing me
as too tough, not with enough humor, for instance.
I think this is a description of the fact that
when a woman is a leader, she seems to people,
it's kind of, subconsciously they're not aware of why,
but nobody reacts in a special way
if a man has to make a difficult decision
and be tough in some kind of way
because decisions have to be made.
If you are a prime minister, you have to do that.
If you are a woman, you can be criticized
because you did the thing that any leader would have done.
But since most leaders are men,
some people don't really understand
why they respond differently to a woman with determination,
compared to a man with determination.
It doesn't mean that I'm not in my private life,
or even on a public scene like yesterday,
able to be laughing or humoristic in my approach.
But you always are going to be criticized
when you are in public life, because people
are competing for your position.
Simple as that.