COVID stimulus spending failed to deliver on climate promises

Host: Benjamin Thompson

Welcome back to the Nature Podcast. This week, how governments’ pandemic stimulus packages missed emissions promises.

Host: Nick Petrić Howe

And how knowing something about a stranger affects behaviour. I’m Nick Petrić Howe.

Host: Benjamin Thompson

And I’m Benjamin Thompson.

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Interviewer: Benjamin Thompson

Around the world, the COVID-19 pandemic is still going on and, in addition to the huge healthcare toll the pandemic has caused, it also brought on a global recession, which has had a significant impacts on countries’ economies. As a result, many nations announced massive fiscal stimulus packages to escape the recession. Many of them also included promises and pledges on climate action, things like ‘green new deals’ or ‘building back better’ – funding projects that would ultimately reduce global emissions. And that’s the subject of a Comment article in this week’s Nature. Specifically, this Comment is looking at the G20 group of nations – representing some of the largest economies on Earth – and whether their promises were kept. To find out, I gave Jonas Nahm, one of the Comment’s authors, a call. I asked him to give me a sense of these countries’ overall levels of stimulus spending.

Interviewee: Jonas Nahm

So, for our study, we looked only at national-level spending and only at fiscal spending, so we didn’t look at loans, we didn’t look at sort of provincial or sub-national government spending, and there was something like US$14 trillion that was spent on economic recovery since the beginning of the pandemic in 2020.

Interviewer: Benjamin Thompson

I mean, that’s an extraordinary figure and one that’s maybe hard to get your head around. US$14 trillion, I mean, what does that kind of equate to maybe in global terms?

Interviewee: Jonas Nahm

So, that’s roughly the same as China’s annual GDP, so that’s about what we spent on recovery.

Interviewer: Benjamin Thompson

And part of the things that were promised within these fiscal recovery measures then were things to tackle climate change, ‘green new deals’ and what have you. What are some of the things that countries said they would do?

Interviewee: Jonas Nahm

I mean, I think governments weren’t very concrete about their promises at the time, but if you remember, at the earlier stages of the pandemic, particularly during the lockdowns, there was a lot of talk about sort of the environmental impact of global emissions being down because of the lack of transportation and sort of the shutdown of air travel and the economy at large, and so I think out of that conversation came these promises that when we were going to start up, we were going to do it differently and better for the climate. There was this idea that we would use some of the money on shifting our economies on a more sustainable path.

Interviewer: Benjamin Thompson

And you wanted to know whether these promises were kept by this group of countries, and you and your colleagues combed through looking at what countries were spending or were promising to spend money on, and then grouped them into whether this would have a positive, negative or neutral impact on emissions. What did you find? What sort of numbers of this US$14 trillion were being spent and where?

Interviewee: Jonas Nahm

So, among the G20 economies, we found that overall something like 6% of spending was dedicated to measures that would eventually reduce global emissions. About 3% of money was spent on things like airline bailouts that would increase emissions over the status quo. And then 91% of money was essentially spent on carbon-neutral things, either things that would build the economy back to where it was or on things like welfare and healthcare and all of these other important things related to the pandemic rather than the economic aspect of it. So, we then broke down emissions-related spending to look at whether this was having a direct impact on emissions, something like retrofitting insulation into houses, or an indirect impact. And so you can think of an indirect impact being something like electric vehicle charging infrastructure, right? It still requires consumers to actually go out and buy a car to then use the charging infrastructure to reduce emissions, so we have this additional wrinkle for this to actually have an impact. The vast majority of spending overall was on things that have an indirect impact.

Interviewer: Benjamin Thompson

And so, 6% overall on activities that reduce emissions. What does this kind of equate to in dollar value, and was it a surprise that it was at this level for you?

Interviewee: Jonas Nahm

So, 6% comes out to be about US$860 billion, so under US$1 trillion. I thought it was low because when we looked at past recessions, we don’t have such good data on what happened in the great financial crisis in 2009, but the studies that do exist say that something like 16% of recovery funds back then were spent on emissions reducing recovery measures. And so, we’re ten years further down the problem and yet we’re sort of falling back proportionately on what we’re spending on combining economic recovery and climate-related measures.

Interviewer: Benjamin Thompson

And who do you think did maybe well in terms of putting money towards emissions reduction to maybe get out of the recession and who maybe didn’t do quite as well? What were some of the things that stood out to you there?

Interviewee: Jonas Nahm

So, not many governments actually gave us concrete numbers to start with to say, ’This is how much money we are going to spend on climate-related recovery measures.’ But there are big differences across them. So, the European Union sort of comes out ahead. They spent or promised to spend more than 40% of their recovery funds on climate. And there are other countries that did well like South Korea, Germany did fairly well, Italy. I think the real surprises to us were sort of countries that, like maybe the United States, Canada, even the UK, that have been talking a lot about climate recently but then didn’t come through with strong emissions-reducing elements in their recovery packages.

Interviewer: Benjamin Thompson

I mean, is there a grim inevitably to this that promises maybe will never match reality, or things that are pledged will get deadlocked? In the US, President Biden, he’s got things he’s trying to get on the books at the moment that are getting held up in government, for example. Is x never going to equal y?

Interviewee: Jonas Nahm

I’m an optimist, right? I think there’s lot of opportunity in a situation like that. So, here’s a situation where we have a big global crisis and governments really rally to try to combat it, and it’s sort of the kind of response that we’ve been looking for in the climate world for a long time. And so, maybe we can now have more confidence that the governments actually can do this and mobilise the kinds of resources needed to combat a global crisis like the pandemic but also like climate change. And I am hoping that that’s maybe one of the lessons that we can take from this. We didn’t get it right this time, but we now know that we can do it in principle, so let’s get it right the next time.

Interviewer: Benjamin Thompson

So, the 6% that’s going towards emission reduction – which comes in at less than US$1 trillion – what sort of a difference do you think this would make to efforts to control climate change?

Interviewee: Jonas Nahm

So, research has shown that in order to meet the net zero emissions by 2050 goals and the sort of 2030 goals of the Paris agreement, we need to spend about US$7 trillion by 2024 on emissions reductions. And so, we’ve spent twice that money in this recession alone on recovery, but we’ve only spent only a very small fraction of that on actual emissions reduction.

Interviewer: Benjamin Thompson

I mean, one of the things you talk about in your Comment is how governments could use this time to future-proof their economies, and I think in the past there maybe has been seen this kind of irreconcilable difference between either growing an economy or protecting the environment, and I think you’re saying that this really isn’t the case and that now is the time that governments should look to act for the future and getting infrastructure in a better place.

Interviewee: Jonas Nahm

Yes, and I think you see this in some of these examples. So, the European Union has been very concerned about the fact that there is no domestic battery industry in Europe, that the car industry is incredibly important. It’s switching to electric vehicles but it’s dependent on imports for most of its batteries, and the batteries are the highest value part of an electric car. And so, the European Union has taken this opportunity to really push into creating a domestic battery industry, right? That’s what I mean by future-proofing your economy. It’s an opportunity to create jobs in a sector where you know there’s going to be growth and where you currently don’t have a lot of domestic activity.

Interviewer: Benjamin Thompson

And in terms of lessons learned and moving forward, you do put forward some ideas as to what could happen next in your Comment, Jonas. What sorts of things do you suggest that governments do as they look to continue to spending their way out of this recession?

Interviewee: Jonas Nahm

So, I think what they can do going forward is focus on things that have direct impact on emissions. There we know it’s going to work immediately. We also found that there are a lot of cheap measures that can have a real impact. So, for instance, if you’re going to bail out businesses, you can attach conditionalities to those bailouts that have climate impacts, and that doesn’t cost you any more money, it just means you have to write the contract differently. And so, if you bailout an airline, like France did, you can say, well, ‘We don’t want you to compete with high-speed rail anymore in the future, so you to pull out of domestic routes.’ We were also surprised by the lack of sort of awareness of what the emissions impact might be, and so I think that’s both a call to researchers to do more work on where we get the biggest bang for our buck, in terms of both jobs and growth but also emissions reductions, but also really a call to governments to be more aware and specific about why they’re doing what they’re doing and sort of explaining it to the rest of us more clearly.

Interviewer: Benjamin Thompson

That was Jonas Nahm from Johns Hopkins University in the US. Look out for a link to his Comment article in the show notes.

Host: Nick Petrić Howe

Coming up, how our assumptions about what people know about us may shape our behaviour. Right now, though, it’s the Research Highlights with Dan Fox.

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Dan Fox

Researchers have created a cybernetic Venus flytrap by successfully integrating an artificial nerve cell into the plant and using it to trigger its snap. Neuromorphic systems are brain-inspired devices that emulate neural processes. Future advances in prosthetics, wearable electronics and other technologies might need systems like these to be integrated with biological tissues. But this integration is difficult: neuromorphic systems are typically made from silicon and have several drawbacks, including rigidity, circuit complexity and operating mechanisms that are fundamentally different from those found in nature. Now, a team of researchers have used carbon-based materials to produce artificial nerve cells that look to overcome these limitations. To demonstrate their functionality, the authors integrated one of them into a Venus flytrap, triggering the plant’s snap when a sufficiently high current was applied to the device. The devices could have multiple applications for new artificial neuronal technology possible to integrate with biological systems. Read that snappy research in Nature Communications.

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Dan Fox

The fossil of a pterosaur with a wingspan of at least 2.5 metres discovered on Scotland’s Isle of Skye is the largest known reptile to have roamed the skies when it lived around 170 million years ago. Scientists have long thought that during the Late Triassic and Jurassic periods, the flying reptiles called pterosaurs were relatively small animals, with wingspans of about 1.6-1.8 metres. They eventually reached the size of fighter jets, but not until the Late Cretaceous, over 60 million years later. But the new fossil dates to the Middle Jurassic and preserves almost the entire body of a pterosaur with a much larger wingspan, which researchers believe was still growing when it died. It has been named Dearc sgiathanach, which is Scottish Gaelic for ‘winged reptile’ or ‘reptile from Skye’. The authors say the findings show that pterosaurs living in the Jurassic period were much larger than previously thought. To find our more, spread your wings and fly over to Current Biology.

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Interviewer: Nick Petrić Howe

How well do you know someone else? It’s a complicated question to answer but, according to psychological research, a mental shortcut we often take when answering it is to assume that this other person knows as much about us as we do about them. My friend also sees me as their friend. But such symmetry in relationships isn’t always the case. For example, if you’re a long-time listener, you may have heard my voice, and even some of my anecdotes dozens of times, so you may feel like you know me. But, I’m sorry, dear listener, you don’t.

Interviewee: Anuj Shah

People tend to know a lot about celebrities. They might feel like they have a connection with those celebrities but, of course, they don’t.

Interviewer: Nick Petrić Howe

This is Anuj Shah, a behavioural scientist from the University of Chicago. And yes, I did just refer to myself as a celebrity, but the point is whilst we assume many of our relationships are symmetrical and reciprocated, they aren’t. And this week in Nature, Anuj has been looking into quite how far that assumption goes.

Interviewee: Anuj Shah

So, given that people tend to overlook these asymmetries, we were interested in whether that might have implications for how anonymous people feel around others, based on how much they think that they know about others. And our prediction would be that when people know more about others, they’ll think others know more about them. That is, we’ll feel less anonymous around people we know more about, even if that doesn't necessarily affect what they know about us.

Interviewer: Nick Petrić Howe

So, if you know a couple of tidbits about someone, like their job or their marital status, you may feel like they know you and so you will feel less anonymous with them. To test this out, Anuj set up a lab study, where participants would interact with a fictional person with pre-programmed responses. They would then rate how well they thought that ‘person’ knew them. The twist being that only some people would receive information about this fictional person, whilst others wouldn’t.

Interviewee: Anuj Shah

So, in our first few studies, we asked people, for example, ‘If you were to meet this person, how much do you feel like they would already know you?’ And when participants were in the information condition, when they received those facts about their partner, they felt as if their partner would know them better.

Interviewer: Nick Petrić Howe

More than that, though, this idea that these strangers knew more about them also affected the participants' behaviour. In a separate study, people were asked to come up with three facts and a lie about themselves. Again, some people knew something about their fictional partner, whilst others didn’t.

Interviewee: Anuj Shah

And in the condition where participants see some facts about their partner, they think their partner is going to be better at guessing which of their statements is a lie.

Interviewer: Nick Petrić Howe

Again, just to emphasise, these ‘partners’ didn’t even exist, never mind actually know anything about the participants. But still participants thought if they knew something about the partners, then the partners knew something about them, and could even see through some mild subterfuge. It has to be said though, it wasn’t a huge effect.

Interviewee: Anuj Shah

I mean, people, on some level, recognise that this person is a stranger, more or less, but let's take the lie detection study, for example. For participants who didn't have any information about their partner, people are saying there’s a 33% chance that their partner will figure out whether or not they're telling a lie. But when people have information about their partner, now they think there's a 41% chance that their partner is going to figure out whether they're lying. So, there's a meaningful difference, although it's not a gigantic effect.

Interviewer: Nick Petrić Howe

This meaningful difference was enough for Anuj to take these results out into the real world, and he decided to look at community policing in New York. This is a form of policing that’s supposed to be more responsive to and understanding of the needs of the community, so Anuj felt it would be a good test case for the concept he was investigating. But given the complex and often systemic problems within policing, it was a somewhat bold choice. In the study, 69 housing developments were split into control and treatment groups. In the treatment group, residents would receive some business cards with some banal information about their local community officer, things like their favourite food, their hobbies, or why they became an officer. The control group received nothing. Each group was then surveyed for how well they thought the officer knew them and how likely the officers would be to know if they had done something illegal.

Interviewee: Anuj Shah

And we find that residents who received this information thought that if they engaged in illegal activity, their neighbourhood officers would be more likely to know that they did. We don't see that it changes how much they think officers know about them in general. But, somewhat paralleling what we find in the lab, it does at least suggest that when we have information about our neighbourhood officers, we think they're more attuned to our actions.

Interviewer: Nick Petrić Howe

This feeling may have also translated into behaviour. The intervention had some other effects.

Interviewee: Anuj Shah

We find that it reduces crime by about 5-7% within 3 months of the intervention. Now, that effect fades out over time, but given how light touch this intervention is, it suggests that there could be a deterrent effect of just learning more about a neighbourhood officer.

Interviewer: Nick Petrić Howe

According to Anuj, this effect is comparable to other community policing interventions. But he also pointed out that this isn’t a ready-to-go intervention, and even if it was, it wouldn’t come close to addressing the myriad of complex challenges facing policing, which in many cases can be linked to wider social and systemic problems like racial bias.

Interviewee: Anuj Shah

In the US especially, there are lots of different police reforms being considered, ranging from different trainings for officers to different forms of accountability for when police don't fulfil their duties, and this is not either of those things. But I think one way to think about this is, given that there are going be police departments, then one thing we can ask is, how can we deter crime without necessarily increasing socially costly enforcement or even interactions between officers and citizens? And to the extent that knowing more about an officer might create some deterrent effect, that's one way to get crime deterrence without necessarily socially costly enforcement.

Interviewer: Nick Petrić Howe

Elicia John is a behavioural scientist from American University who’s been writing about this new paper in a News and Views article. She agreed that this isn’t a catch-all solution, but was positive about its potential impacts.

Interviewee: Elicia John

A lot of emphasis on behavioural science is like understanding how these different phenomenon that we see can actually make a positive impact in society. So, I applaud them for taking this from the laboratory to a setting that could have a real impact in terms of wellbeing and in outcomes. So, definitely, it can apply to a lot of different contexts, but I think this one is one in which we're all trying to time and develop like good solutions to a very challenging problem.

Interviewer: Nick Petrić Howe

A positive part of this study for Elicia is that this may represent an intervention that can have real effects without relying on force, contrasting with other contentious policies like New York’s infamous stop and frisk.

Interviewee: Elicia John

So, seeing interventions that don't exhibit more aggressive types of force, that do kind of leverage a more community aspect of policing, is very positive from a policy perspective. So, it was very exciting to hear something of this nature being effective.

Interviewer: Nick Petrić Howe

But Elicia still has some unanswered questions. For one, and maybe listeners you’ve spotted this one, there’s a bit of a discrepancy between the lab results and the real world trial. In the real world trial, people didn’t actually feel like their officers knew them any better, they just felt like the officers would know if they had engaged in some illegal activity.

Interviewee: Elicia John

There also could be some other psychological mechanisms at play. Just having very limited information about someone can make them feel more similar to you, can also increase a sense of kind of emotional connection that you have with that person that can drive some of your behaviours in a sense. Feeling more emotionally or psychologically connected to someone can make you want to behave in a certain way that's more pleasing or acceptable to them. So, there are alternate explanations for the effects.

Interviewer: Nick Petrić Howe

One alternative explanation could be that residents just felt like the police were watching them more. So, Elicia would like to know if this is the case. Were people feeling more surveilled and, if so, is that something that we really want? For Anuj, there are unanswered questions about what’s going on here as well, but he doesn’t think the effects were down to people feeling like they were being more surveilled.

Interviewee: Anuj Shah

So, I think that's a real possibility that we try to address in a few different ways. One way we can address that is by if it's just feeling like officers are surveilling you more generally, than you might think that the effect would be biggest soon after you receive that mailer. But we don't find evidence of that. The crime decrease is not specific to soon after receiving the mail, or for example. The other thing we can do, and this is imperfect, but we can ask, what do other interventions that have mailed newsletters to residents from police officers or police departments, what effect did those newsletters have? And so the evidence here comes from some interventions in Houston, Texas, and Newark, New Jersey, in the US. But in those interventions, they sent newsletters to residents from police departments explaining the crime statistics, and they looked at whether that affected people's perceptions of crime in their neighbourhood or of the police, and you just don't see any effect of those newsletters at all. So, that suggests it's not just receiving some communication from police that’s having this effect. It might actually be the unique component of learning more about an officer.

Interviewer: Nick Petrić Howe

Anuj wants to take this research further and try to understand other ways that could affect how we see each other.

Interviewee: Anuj Shah

What happens when you share more with somebody than they share with you? Do you still start to believe that there is a symmetric connection and now do you believe that you know more about that person even though all that's happened is that you've been talking their ear off and you actually haven't heard very much from them at all? So, I think that's maybe that most straightforward psychological question to ask next, which is, what happens when you're sharing information with others?

Interviewer: Nick Petrić Howe

That was Anuj Shah from the University of Chicago in the US. You also heard from Elicia John from American University, also in the US. To read more about this paper, check out the show notes for a link to it and a link to Elicia’s News and Views article.

Interviewer: Benjamin Thompson

On 24 February, Russian forces invaded Ukraine, and there is ongoing conflict and an unfolding humanitarian crisis occurring there right now. Around the globe, governments and companies have been taking action against Russia, and the world of academia is no different, and that’s what we’re going to be talking about next, and joining me to do so is Nisha Gaind, Nature’s European Bureau Chief. Nisha, hi.

Interviewee: Nisha Gaind

Hi, Ben.

Interviewer: Benjamin Thompson

It’s worth saying that we are recording this on Tuesday afternoon, and this is of course a fast-moving and ever-changing situation. But with that in mind, in previous weeks, Nisha, you’ve written about the preparations that scientists in Ukraine had been making prior to invasion. What are researchers experiencing there now? What have they told Nature?

Interviewee: Nisha Gaind

Yeah, so we’ve managed to speak to some Ukrainian scientists who are obviously experiencing very distressing conditions as town after town and cities are being bombarded with Russian shelling and being invaded by Russian soldiers. Some have chosen to flee. Many are making their way to the Polish border. But we have managed to speak to scientists who have stayed in place and who are observing destruction, in some cases to their universities. These are incredibly distressing times for the Ukrainian people, and we’re really grateful to the Ukrainian scientists who have spoken to us. Often with air raid alarms going off in the background and having to shelter in bomb shelters, their priorities are of course making sure that their families are safe. In some cases, we’ve heard that they have sent their work to colleagues overseas hoping that in the worst case scenario, in the case of death, that somebody might carry on their work. So, we’re hearing these troubling, troubling stories that are happening as a result of this conflict, and from people who, I must say, sound incredibly calm and collected on the phone and speak with such clarity, despite what is happening in their nation.

Interviewer: Benjamin Thompson

Yeah, troubling stories indeed, Nisha, and what message have these academics had?

Interviewee: Nisha Gaind

The message that we’re hearing from Ukrainian scientists is that they want to condemn, in the strongest possible terms, Vladimir Putin’s invasion, and many of them call him out by name to say this is the act of one man. And in association with that, Ukrainian scientists have said that the sanctions against Russia, and in particular the Russian academic community, must also be severe, and that tallies with the tough, tough economic sanctions that Western nations and the European Union have been announcing and imposing on Russia in the past week, since the invasion began.

Interviewer: Benjamin Thompson

And we’ve been reporting that academics are coming together to try and convince international bodies to take action. What sorts of things are they doing?

Interviewee: Nisha Gaind

So, we’ve heard a chorus of condemnation from the world’s scientists, and that includes scientists in Russia, who say that they are appalled by their government’s actions. Some of them are out in the streets getting arrested in Moscow and Saint Petersburg. But we have also heard from the rest of the world’s scientists who, at this time, are cutting off, in many cases, collaborations with Russia. In some cases it means that from one day to another, people are discouraged to even talk or email their colleagues in Russia because of the sanctions and the sentiment toward Russia at this time. And we’re seeing requests from Ukrainian and Western scientists to places like the European Commission to say please freeze all collaboration with Russia out of your programmes. And in many cases, Ukrainian scientists say they understand and they appreciate the stance and the condemnation that they’re hearing from their Russian counterparts, but they say in no uncertain terms that Russia must be frozen out, that the academic and the global community must take the strongest possible stance it can.

Interviewer: Benjamin Thompson

And in many cases, stances are already being taken, certainly in terms of things like funding, for example.

Interviewee: Nisha Gaind

That’s right. In one of the strongest decisions we’ve heard, an association of German research organisations, which includes their national funder, the DFG, says that they will cease funding Russian science or collaborations that involve Russian science. And in other example, MIT, the prestigious university in the US, has ended its relationship with the Skolkovo Foundation, which is a Russian non-profit organisation that focuses on innovation. That is associated also with the Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology, a research university in Moscow, and MIT has said that it has taken this decision with deep regret because of the respect that it has for many of its excellent Russian colleagues, but that at this time it has no choice but to end the relationship in light of the conflict in in Ukraine.

Interviewer: Benjamin Thompson

And it’s not just things like funding, Nisha. Other ties have been severed too and in some quite varied areas, right, like at events but also in space research too.

Interviewee: Nisha Gaind

If you think about relations in the past 30 years between Russia and the West, they had, in fact, been warming, and we have been seeing greater collaboration in space. In particular, the European Space Agency has been collaborating quite significantly on a project called ExoMars, which involves sending a rover to Mars, which was due to launch later this year. That launch is now in question because of Russia’s actions in Ukraine. The European Space Agency has said that it’s very unlikely that this rover will launch. And in terms of events, there was a very high-profile mathematics conference due to take place in Saint Petersburg this summer. That is a conference of the International Mathematical Union, which happens only every four years, and at that conference, they award the Fields Medal which is the most prestigious prize in mathematics. Because of protest, not only from mathematical unions around the world but also from invited speakers to that conference, they will no longer be holding that meeting in Russia and, in fact, will move the conference online.

Interviewer: Benjamin Thompson

Well, Nisha, there’s clearly a lot going on around the world and a lot will continue to go on over the next days, weeks and months. But for the time being, I think it’s right to say that focus really should be on Ukraine and the people there who are directly affected by this conflict.

Interviewee: Nisha Gaind

Yeah, that’s right. We are very grateful to Ukrainian researchers who have taken the time to speak to us, and we are thinking of those scientists and hope for their safety. And we have heard from some Ukrainian scientists who have said their colleagues or students have taken up arms to fight in this conflict for their country, which is an extraordinary choice to have to make in what has been an extraordinary week in global politics.

Interviewer: Benjamin Thompson

Nature’s Nisha Gaind there. To read all of Nature’s coverage of the Ukrainian conflict, head over to nature.com/news.

Host: Nick Petrić Howe

That’s all for the show. But just time to mention that last week was the 35^th anniversary of sighting of supernova SN1987A, and we have a new video about how a scientist detected it and how they’re preparing to make sure they don’t miss the next supernova, with a Supernova Early Warning System, or SNEWS for short. There’ll be a link to that video in the show notes.

Host: Benjamin Thompson

And, as always, don’t forget you can keep in touch with us via Twitter – we’re @NaturePodcast – or send us an email to podcast@nature.com. I’m Benjamin Thompson.

Host: Nick Petrić Howe

And I’m Nick Petrić Howe. Thanks for listening.