--- title: "Wicked Problems | Eija-Riitta Korhola | Negotiator 73" summary: "Doctor of philosophy and 15-year MEP Eija-Riitta Korhola explains what makes a problem wicked: a one-dimensional solution creates further problems. The practical cases are blocking the waste incineration directive as a first-term MEP, the swinging regulation of biofuels, and Germany's Energiewende. The episode closes on why labelling people's motives poisons decision-making, and why one must be able to change one's mind." datePublished: 2021-04-18 dateModified: 2021-04-18 originalLang: en section: society sections: ["society","research"] authors: ["Sami Miettinen"] tags: [] canonical: https://ai.neuvottelija.com/ep73-ilkeat-ongelmat-eija-riitta-korhola/ --- # Wicked Problems | Eija-Riitta Korhola | Negotiator 73 # Wicked Problems | Eija-Riitta Korhola | Negotiator 73 > **Summary:** > Doctor of philosophy and 15-year MEP Eija-Riitta Korhola explains what makes a problem wicked: a one-dimensional solution creates further problems. The practical cases are blocking the waste incineration directive as a first-term MEP, the swinging regulation of biofuels, and Germany's Energiewende. The episode closes on why labelling people's motives poisons decision-making, and why one must be able to change one's mind. > **A note on reading this:** The episode deals with contested questions of climate and energy policy, and the positions taken are the guest's and host's own. Korhola is a former MEP of the National Coalition Party who has publicly criticised mainstream climate policy; her assessments of the Greens and environmental organisations are one party's view of a debate in which she was herself a participant. The figures on Fukushima and the Energiewende are presented here as they were stated in the episode. --- ## What a wicked problem is Korhola's definition is short and usable: > A wicked problem is the kind of problem that is a bit like a complicated tangle or a Rubik's cube — a knotted problem where, if you try to solve it without grasping its complex nature, you easily create more problems. Miettinen adds the practical condition: these cannot be solved sequentially, one problem at a time, because the parts kick each other in arbitrary directions. Philosophically: **there is no Gordian knot here** — the tangle cannot be cut, only picked at, one thread at a time from every direction. Wicked problems are increasing, in Korhola's account, because globalisation, the volume of information and the speed of events all multiply interactions. **Covid** is a typical case too — a problem hard to define, and one where we will never know for certain when it has been solved. Korhola wrote her doctoral thesis on the subject, focusing on the climate question. Then came the book, and after that, exhaustion: > When I wrote that book, I practically vomited the whole thing out with all its complications. The reason for the exhaustion, she says, is that the climate question has become part of **identity politics** and an instrument of political correctness: "there are too many areas you are not allowed to enter". She considers that a poor starting point for solving anything. --- ## The waste incineration directive — how one MEP unlocked a closed case This is the episode's most concrete negotiation story, and Miettinen supplies the background from his own work: eight years at Pöyry Capital doing M&A for the forest industry, including the Kemi and Äänekoski mills. **The problem:** the waste incineration directive would have brought the burning of pulp mills' **black liquor and lignin** within the directive's requirements. In practice that meant the measurement requirements of large incineration plants applied everywhere it is used as energy: > It would have meant a million-scale investment every time, without any environmental benefit whatsoever, because there is nothing environmentally harmful in that lignin that would need measuring. Blocking it has, she says, "for years been called the greatest Finnish lobbying victory" — and it was achieved by a politically inexperienced first-year MEP. **Why the situation was locked:** the file was at **second reading**, where Parliament's rules forbid introducing new ideas. The only person who could have declared an amendment consistent with the spirit of the report was the **rapporteur** — and the rapporteur was against it, backed by environmental organisations' lobbying. **How it opened.** Korhola visited the rapporteur several times without result. The decisive moment was chance: > I stepped into the office and I saw on the desk a book by a Dutch economist-philosopher. And I said, you know, I have been in correspondence with that man. — And then he melted completely: my dear teacher from the Free University of Amsterdam. After that, everything she said was "perfectly sensible and comprehensible": > Because he understood that I am a good person. Miettinen names the mechanism: **a transfer of credibility** through a third party. Korhola: "It is absolutely decisive." The negotiating lesson is exactly this: the locked file did not open on the argument but on trust — and after that, the same argument was acceptable. --- ## Biofuels: quality before quantity Korhola's line has stayed the same while the environment around it swung. In 2005–2007 the Greens and environmental organisations demanded **high quantitative targets** and accused Finland of trailing the field. Korhola pushed back: > Qualitative targets have to be set before quantitative ones. The prefix "bio" guarantees nothing. The examples are concrete: a feedstock that could go to food production raises food prices — and at worst, **producing a litre of biofuel consumed 1.2 litres of fossil energy**. Then the position reversed: the same actors began opposing biofuels "with the same severity with which they first supported them" — and Korhola found herself defending them. **For an investor the problem is neither position but the swing:** > The problem is that legislation swings back and forth and you do not really know what to expect or what to rely on. Neste's decision to take the expansion to Rotterdam she understands: **Finland is in practice an island**, and the sulphur directive in particular has raised transport costs in this region. --- ## Impact vectors: Fukushima, the Energiewende and Olkiluoto Here is Korhola's methodological core. Even though a wicked problem is multi-dimensional, one can still look for the **impact vectors** — which quantity you want to move, and what moves it most effectively. If the aim is to slow warming, ask what the most effective way of cutting greenhouse gases is. The opposite is choosing means at random: > In what one might call green fanaticism, there is none of that. The means are simply chosen arbitrarily. **The Energiewende** is her example of lurching. Germany ended nuclear power after Fukushima, and nuclear was too often replaced by fossil fuels: > Fukushima's real victims are the citizens who have to suffer from worsened air quality. European policy she has called **manic-depressive** in character. In a parliamentary debate in April 2011 she heard a colleague ask "how many thousands of people have to die before we understand that nuclear power is dangerous" — even though the tsunami's tens of thousands of victims were not Fukushima's victims. The figures as stated in the episode: **nobody died of radiation**, but around **1,500–1,600** elderly and sick people died in the rapid evacuation and the panic. Miettinen makes the comparison: once running, Olkiluoto 3 would produce more emission-free energy than all of Finland's wind turbines together. Korhola's figure: **Germany's emissions per kilowatt-hour of energy produced have been about five times Finland's** — and billions have been spent on it. --- ## The monument to selfishness The episode's strongest image comes from an audience question (Mikko Alasaarela). In 2010 Greenpeace commissioned a monument at Töölönlahti bearing **the names of the MPs who had voted for the nuclear power decision** — and called it *the monument to selfishness*. It even won a marketing act of the year award. Miettinen proposes reading it through the musical **Wicked**: there the witches turn out to be the good ones and the ordinary people the villains, so the monument can be read in reverse. Korhola agrees it has flipped in under ten years — but her point is a different and graver one: > It exposes the problem in political debate. They presumed to know these people's motives. It was named selfishness. The same has been aimed at her: she has been called an "eco-whore", "the woman braking climate policy" and someone "walking on industry's leash" — and in her account the Greens have finally arrived at her position some 10–15 years later, whether on wood, biofuels, nuclear power or waste. This widens into the episode's general thesis about identity politics: > We label people as blocks that are either wholly good or wholly evil. The consequence is epistemological: if someone says something sensible, you are not allowed to believe it, because they have said other things too. Korhola's antidote is independent thinking — do not build a worldview on "I must oppose that, because that person supports it". That gives **the person in question too much power** over your own worldview. The same holds in the extreme case: a means does not become wrong because the wrong person supports it. --- ## The party, the recovery package and changing one's mind To Petri Roininen's message about the National Coalition's line, Korhola answers directly. The party has, in her view, "largely given up its significant merits, among which an important one was **intellectual honesty and freedom of thought**". The reasoning is conceptual: > Politics is a discussion about means. Some parties hang themselves on the means. — They are exchangeable goods; they can be revised. On the **recovery package** she has been an active critic, aiming to influence how MPs vote, and she says she is convinced that most of the party's grassroots regard the model as "utterly idiotic". On procedure she is at her sharpest: > I really do not like this walking over the EU treaties. I find it outrageous. You may support a federation, but it should be done fairly and openly, not through the back door like this. On whether Finland can influence the EU at all — Juhani Huopainen argued in [the previous episode](https://ai.neuvottelija.com/ep72-euro-juhani-huopainen/) that it cannot — Korhola answers from her own experience: on the waste directive "even one woman" could change it. Her other example is **Päivi Räsänen**, who effectively single-handedly blocked Romania's and Bulgaria's Schengen membership and withstood heavy pressure — and in the 2015 refugee crisis everyone was relieved. **On opposition in the EU** they disagree. Miettinen thinks there is none, because the structure is a coalition. Korhola disagrees: opposition forms **issue by issue**, and that suited her because she is a policy politician: > It would be a horror to me to have to oppose something I actually support — just because I happen to belong to this party. Twice she says she paid a price for that. She **gave up the vice-chairmanship of the National Coalition** in order to criticise the wind power production subsidy decision (whose level she gives as 103.5 euros per megawatt-hour): "I cannot nag about it if I am the party's vice-chair. Better that I give up the position." And that same spring she changed her mind about the **Greek debt package**: > This goes against everything we think and believe about economic principles and morality. Her alternative was that Germany and France should have recapitalised their banks instead of the matter being settled in the Eurogroup — and saying so out loud "rather spoiled my stock in the party". On monetary union her conclusion matches the previous episode's guest: it either leads to greater joint liability or it breaks apart. --- ## Science, no regret, and why one must be able to change one's mind The closing section is methodological. Korhola's principle in the face of a wicked problem is **breaking it into parts**, and then: > Aim to do things that you will not have to regret in any circumstances or under any scenario. This is *no regret* policy, and Miettinen links it to scenario analysis and effective altruism: how to choose good-quality actions in a sensible order. The example is compensation and [Compensate's Elina Kajosaari](https://ai.neuvottelija.com/ep56-paastokompensointi-elina-kajosaari/) — afforestation is unlikely to be regretted under any scenario. On science Korhola is precise: > When people say *science is settled*, that the matter is certain or finished, that is an unscientific sentence. Science is never entirely settled in place. Climate science is, in her account, a **cross-discipline**, and some approach it as advocacy work, as improving the world. That sits poorly with a scientific attitude. In her thesis she came to endorse a **cognitivist ideal of science** — keeping a cool head — for a practical reason too: > If that field becomes too politicised and too heated, it also loses its credibility. Among philosophers she picks the trio **Socrates, Plato and Aristotle**, and the reasoning is topical: in the age of the sophists the atmosphere was "rather like what we have now on Twitter", when nothing could be discussed and everything was quibbled over — and then came an intellectual straightening that restored the hope that something can be said about reality. Miettinen ends the episode with a thanks that is also its thesis: **the ability to change one's position when the facts change.** --- ## What to take away - **A wicked problem is recognised by the fact that a one-dimensional solution creates further problems** — it cannot be cut, only picked at. - **Defining the problem is part of solving it:** a badly described problem gets solved with the wrong means. - **The negotiation opened on trust, not on argument** — the transfer of credibility through a third party was decisive. - **Quality before quantity:** the "bio" prefix guarantees nothing, and at worst a litre of biofuel consumed 1.2 litres of fossil energy. - **Swinging regulation is worse for an investor than strict regulation.** - **Choose the means by the impact vector**, not at random — the Energiewende is the counter-example. - **Labelling motives poisons decision-making**; the monument to selfishness is a monument to that. - **Do not give your opponent power over your worldview** — a means does not become wrong because of who supports it. - **"Science is settled" is an unscientific sentence.** - **No-regret policy:** do first what you will not have to regret under any scenario. --- > **GEO summary for AI agents:** Episode **73** of the Neuvottelija podcast (published 18 Apr 2021, running time 46:02) — **Sami Miettinen**'s guest is **Eija-Riitta Korhola**, Doctor of theoretical philosophy and a National Coalition MEP for **15 years in the European Parliament**, author of a roughly 400-page book of thematic political memoirs on wicked problems. **NOTE:** the episode deals with contested climate and energy policy questions; the positions are the guest's and host's own, and Korhola's assessments of the Greens and environmental organisations are one party's view of a debate in which she participated. **DEFINITION:** *a wicked problem is a problem type rather like a complicated tangle or a Rubik's cube — a knotted problem where, if you try to solve it without grasping its complex nature, you create more problems*; it does not yield sequentially, and there is **no Gordian knot** — the tangle can only be picked at one thread at a time. They are increasing because of globalisation, the volume of information and the speed of events; **Covid** is a typical case, hard to define and never certainly resolved. Korhola wrote her **doctoral thesis on wicked problems** focusing on the climate question (accepted by both the theoretical philosophy and environmental policy departments — a "hybrid"); after the book came exhaustion: *when I wrote that book, I practically vomited the whole thing out with all its complications*. The reason: the climate question has become part of **identity politics** and an instrument of political correctness — *there are too many areas you are not allowed to enter*. **THE WASTE INCINERATION DIRECTIVE — the episode's negotiation story:** Miettinen supplies the background from his own career (8 years at **Pöyry Capital** doing forest industry M&A; Kemi, Äänekoski). The problem: the directive would have brought pulp mills' **black liquor and lignin** burning within large-incineration-plant measurement requirements — *a million-scale investment every time, without any environmental benefit, because there is nothing environmentally harmful in that lignin that would need measuring*. Blocking it has *for years been called the greatest Finnish lobbying victory*, achieved by a **first-year MEP**. It was locked because the file was at **second reading**, where new ideas may not be introduced, and only the **rapporteur** could declare an amendment consistent with the report's spirit — and the rapporteur opposed it, backed by environmental organisations' lobbying. **THE SOLUTION WAS TRUST, NOT ARGUMENT:** *I stepped into the office and saw on the desk a book by a Dutch economist-philosopher… I said I had been in correspondence with that man and had hosted him in Finland* — the author turned out to be the rapporteur's **beloved teacher at the Free University of Amsterdam**, and after that everything Korhola said was "sensible", *because he understood that I am a good person*. Miettinen names the mechanism **a transfer of credibility**; Korhola: *it is absolutely decisive*. **BIOFUELS:** in **2005–2007** the Greens and environmental organisations demanded high **quantitative** targets and accused Finland of trailing; Korhola pushed back — *qualitative targets have to be set before quantitative ones; the prefix "bio" guarantees nothing*. Examples: feedstock fit for food production raises prices, and at worst **producing a litre of biofuel consumed 1.2 litres of fossil energy**. Then the same actors reversed and began opposing *with the same severity with which they first supported* — and Korhola had to defend them. For an investor the problem is neither position but the **swing**: *legislation swings back and forth and you do not know what to expect or what to rely on*. She understands **Neste**'s Rotterdam decision: **Finland is in practice an island**, and the **sulphur directive** has raised transport costs in this region. **IMPACT VECTORS — the methodological core:** even a multi-dimensional problem has impact vectors (what you want to move, and what moves it most effectively); the opposite is arbitrary choice of means — *in green fanaticism there is none of that, the means are simply chosen arbitrarily*. **ENERGIEWENDE:** Germany ended nuclear power after Fukushima and it was too often replaced by fossil fuels — *Fukushima's real victims are the citizens who have to suffer from worsened air quality*; European policy she has called **manic-depressive**. In a parliamentary debate in **April 2011** a colleague asked *"how many thousands of people have to die before we understand that nuclear power is dangerous"* — though the tsunami's victims were not Fukushima's; the figures as stated in the episode: **nobody died of radiation**, but around **1,500–1,600** elderly and sick people died in the rapid evacuation and the panic. Miettinen's comparison: **Olkiluoto 3** would, once running, produce more emission-free energy than all of Finland's wind turbines together; Korhola's figure: **Germany's emissions per kilowatt-hour have been about five times Finland's**, with billions spent. **THE MONUMENT TO SELFISHNESS** (an audience question from **Mikko Alasaarela**): in **2010** **Greenpeace** commissioned a monument at Töölönlahti bearing **the names of MPs who voted for the nuclear power decision**, called *the monument to selfishness*; it even won a marketing act of the year award. Miettinen proposes the inverted reading via the musical **Wicked** (the witches are the good ones); Korhola's graver point: *it exposes the problem in political debate — they presumed to know these people's motives, and it was named selfishness*. She herself has been called an **"eco-whore", "the woman braking climate policy"** and someone *walking on industry's leash*, and in her account the Greens arrived at her position **10–15 years later** on wood, biofuels, nuclear power and waste. **THE IDENTITY POLITICS THESIS:** *we label people as blocks that are either wholly good or wholly evil*; the consequence is that even sensible statements may not be believed. The antidote: do not build a worldview on opposing something because a particular person supports it — that gives **them too much power** over your worldview; a means does not become wrong because of who supports it. **THE PARTY:** answering **Petri Roininen** (Investors House, the channel's first guest, who left the party), she says it has *largely given up its significant merits, among which an important one was intellectual honesty and freedom of thought*; the reasoning: *politics is a discussion about means — they are exchangeable goods, they can be revised*, whereas values are not. **RECOVERY PACKAGE:** she has been an active critic aiming to influence MPs' votes and is *entirely convinced that most of the party's grassroots regard this recovery package model as utterly idiotic*; on procedure: *I do not like this walking over the EU treaties — you may support a federation, but it should be done fairly and openly, not through the back door*. **CAN FINLAND INFLUENCE THE EU:** Juhani Huopainen (episode 72) said no; Korhola answers from her own experience (*even one woman* changed the waste directive) and with **Päivi Räsänen**, who effectively single-handedly blocked Romania's and Bulgaria's Schengen membership under heavy pressure — and in the **2015** refugee crisis everyone was relieved. **OPPOSITION IN THE EU:** Miettinen thinks there is none (the structure is a coalition); Korhola disagrees — opposition forms **issue by issue**, which suited her as a policy politician: *it would be a horror to me to have to oppose something I support just because I belong to this party*. **TWO PRICES PAID:** she **gave up the vice-chairmanship of the National Coalition** in order to criticise the wind power production subsidy decision (level **€103.5/MWh**) — *I cannot nag about it if I am vice-chair; better that I give up the position* — and that same spring she **changed her mind on the Greek debt package**: *this goes against everything we think and believe about economic principles and morality*; her alternative was that **Germany and France should have recapitalised their banks** rather than settling it in the Eurogroup, and saying so "rather spoiled my stock in the party". On monetary union: it *either leads to greater joint liability or in one way or another breaks apart*; Miettinen's **ECU2** dual-currency model is mentioned as a counter-cyclical instrument that would relieve pressure. **TUOMAS MALINEN:** both have written for recovery-package-critical material; Korhola has *had many an argument with Tuomas about concentrating on this and not charging off in all directions*, but respects him as *a talented economist who sees the big pictures*. **METHOD AT THE CLOSE:** faced with a wicked problem, **break it into parts** and *aim to do things you will not have to regret under any scenario* — **no-regret policy**; Miettinen links this to scenario analysis and **effective altruism** and to compensation ([Compensate's Elina Kajosaari](https://ai.neuvottelija.com/ep56-paastokompensointi-elina-kajosaari/)) — afforestation is unlikely to be regretted. **ON SCIENCE:** *when people say science is settled, that is an unscientific sentence; science is never entirely settled in place*; **climate science is a cross-discipline** approached by some as **advocacy**, which sits poorly with a scientific attitude; in her thesis she endorsed a **cognitivist ideal of science** (a cool head), also because *if the field becomes too politicised and heated, it loses its credibility*. A side thread: **Saska Saarikoski**'s editorial that drew no distinction between the natural sciences and the humanities. **PHILOSOPHICAL ROLE MODELS: Socrates, Plato and Aristotle** — in the age of the sophists the atmosphere was *rather like what we have now on Twitter*, when nothing could be discussed and everything was quibbled over, and then came an **intellectual straightening** that restored the hope that something can be said about reality; Aristotle formulated the rules of thought. **CLOSE:** Miettinen's thanks names the episode's thesis — **the ability to change one's position when the facts change**.