Think fast! Or Maybe Not? Behavioural Science Informed Policy and what Covid Policy can Teach us About Solving Climate Change
We talk good policy making, behavioural science and a comparison between COVID and climate change response policies!
Show Notes:
Sebastian’s bio - https://www.bi.team/people/sebastian-salomon-ballada/
The world is coming together to fight coronavirus. It can do the same for the climate crisis - https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/18/world/coronavirus-and-climate-crisis-response-intl-hnk/index.html
Eight Lessons from COVID-19 to Guide Our Climate Response - https://eos.org/articles/eight-lessons-from-covid-19-to-guide-our-climate-response
The tale of two Crises: COVID-19 and the Climate - https://www.evergreen.ca/blog/entry/the-tale-of-two-crises-covid-19-and-the-climate/
Climate scientist and epidemiologist Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@dr.noc/video/6863995933638577414
TRANSCRIPT:
Sebastian 0:10
COVID policy responses are interesting because in a lot of ways, it allows us to examine processes and systems that may have not been producing good outcomes to people or may have been putting people under strain for a long time, but the health crisis puts such an emergency focus of aid that we have to respond because people's lives are at risk.
Kiran 0:32
Hey, thanks for joining us today. My name is Kiran Waterhouse and I'm here with my friend Leslie Anne St. Amour. We are two law grads and friends, and we know that climate change is here, and we have to solve it. So, every second Friday we'll be talking about how we can get there while improving our own lives and communities along the way, all opinions are our own. Today we talked about policy responses the COVID-19 crisis, totally, they can guide us towards stronger climate action. What does it mean when policy is based in behavioral science? Can we use humans’ natural instincts for progress? Plus, a long-awaited conversation between epidemiologists and climate scientists that we want to happen on this week's Climate Allies.
Leslie Anne 1:14
Welcome to Rebalancing Act, joining us for this episode every balancing act. We have, Sebastian Solomon Ballada is a good friend of the podcast and works in policy development. He's also been involved with climate organizing throughout the years. The firm's Sebastian forks for, in terms of policy development, focuses on behavioral science and foreign policy so Sebastian, can you tell us a little bit about your work broadly.
Sebastian 1:37
Hello, thanks for having me on the podcast. I'm a big fan. I've always been really passionate about understanding the way in which people think, and especially how they think about how they think so this metacognition aspect, by which people try to rationalize their own thinking and decision making back to themselves, and how it guides you know the ways in which we behave and how, then that shapes the way in which society behaves more broadly, so I studied sociology and my interest throughout my undergrad was trying to find the inter linkages between people's actions and their behaviors and broader societal goals and objectives. So now I work for the Behavioural Insights Team, behavioral insights are an approach that uses evidence of the conscious and non-conscious drivers of human behavior to address practical issues. So, the real insight within this field of work is that human behavior is nonconscious habitual and driven by cues in our environment or the way choices are presented. So, in our day to day we often end up using mental shortcuts or rules of thumb to navigate our environment, the ways in which we respond to public policy, or programs in our day to day happens very much in the same way we use our quote unquote fast brain, which is very efficient and it's the kind of thinking we have when we say two by two to approach practical challenges in our day to day as well, that, you know, sometimes other approaches towards policy have thought would be more quote unquote rational.
Leslie Anne 3:20
That's really helpful. I think I even now have a better understanding of what exactly it means to do policy in a way that's informed by behavioral science, I never think about in the terms of the resources people have themselves and they're in the best position to understand. So, I know that you've had the opportunity to work on some policy related to COVID, is there anything you can tell us about how it felt. We'll do that kind of work.
Sebastian 3:43
Yeah, we, my team, has supported, some COVID response initiatives with regards to communications and how we try and present the challenges and potential solutions to people so that they will be more likely to follow up on those actions, I think most people would agree that taking care of themselves, is important, but sometimes there can be barriers to carrying out the actions that care requires. So, in general, my work is done some research on how to promote social distancing and masculine behaviors and hand washing and things of the sort. Firstly, I've had the opportunity to support with more some of the more indirect pieces of COVID response especially focusing on burnout for certain adverse populations, and I think COVID policy response is interesting because in a lot of ways, it allows us to examine processes and systems that may have not been producing good outcomes to people may have been putting people on their stream for a long time, but the health crisis puts such an emergency focus of it, we have to respond because people's lives are at risk. So what my work is related to COVID responses focused on more of the indirect consequences like additional stress and burnout on at risk frontline workers, I think it's different to other policy areas and focused on before because the emergency response is just so much more clear and the negative consequences that come from COVID are so immediate that it's very easy for us to visualize know the incredible importance of those in the frontlines and the incredible importance of response initiatives, and I think this is in contrast with other policy response areas which prevent things have consequences in more of a long term. And in a lot of cases, COVID has put enough strain in systems that we're starting to see the importance of how these dynamics play and how for example the link between housing, and public health is so much more direct now in people's minds and we can see why the housing emergency is something we need to address the public health crisis,
Leslie Anne 5:47
that's a really, really good way of looking at it that kind of creates two groups of policy response, one for those that are kind of recognized as an emergency and urgent, and those other kind of long term long looking policy responses where you're not necessarily seeing such urgency, does that reflect what you were saying?
Sebastian 6:06
Yeah, I mean a lot of ways, humans are were made to respond to things with more immediate consequences quicker, right, if hangovers happened, an hour after drinking and not the next day no one would drink. Similarly, this is why one of the big reasons why the period through which people are symptomatic and COVID is so troublesome because they hit the hangover enough time afterwards that people may be taking more risky behaviors than they would.
Leslie Anne 6:35
That's a really good way to put it, and I really like that hangover metaphor, with those kind of two types of policy that we just talked about those with an urgent response, and those that are more long term looking, I would want to say climate change to go in that first basket with kind of an urgent response required but I feel like that's not how we see a lot of climate change policies, where do you think climate change should fit within those kind of two basket.
Sebastian 7:00
I think a lot of it will change and years to come and already is changing us the crisis, climate crisis looms more imminent and we have more and more evidence of its devastation for communities around the world, but I do want to talk about this idea of the two baskets really it's quite a diffuse line between response and more long term and a lot of times, things that are pure in immediate response require long term components and vice versa.
Leslie Anne 7:28
What do you think we can learn about climate policy from the way that we've been approaching COVID, a lot of people seem to think that if we can respond to COVID this way we should be able to respond to climate change?
Sebastian 7:40
So, in a lot of ways I think by examining people's responses to COVID, which is a situation where everyone has to adopt their actions and their behaviors for the greater social good. Even though there may be less onus or accountability placed on the person as an individual for these issues. We can draw parallels from that other things like the climate crisis which might require individual action change and think, there are distinctions in the extent to which the systemic issues are caused by some more structural forces versus in COVID I think the focus is rightly placed on individual action of people to prevent the spread. Whereas on climate change, we might need more structural responses, but at the end of the day we do need people to act or think differently in some regard.
Leslie Anne 8:27
So, I understand what you're saying in the sense that COVID is much more spread by individual actions whereas, in terms of the climate crisis, as we've learned during COVID during lockdown when our individual carbon footprints shrunk substantially because we weren't traveling we weren't leaving our homes, but carbon emissions didn't drop as significantly as many people speculated they might, because so many of the big sources of carbon are structural issues and our large corporations are large industry like agriculture and transport that we as individuals don't have significant impact on in our daily choices. What do you think is the biggest lesson as someone who works in policy that we can take away from COVID to apply to climate change?
Sebastian 9:13
Through COVID, we can very directly see what the outcomes of various policy action and some are of societal choices are, I think, in other policy realms, like climate change, it will be important to be able to link specific policy or social changes to the outcomes that these would have, I think increasingly as the climate emergency worsens this is going to happen more and more, but I think we have to anticipate this and do better by clearly articulating the ways in which we need both individual and structural change to the ways in which we live our lives.
Leslie Anne 9:51
I think that's a really, really important thing to consider, because as an individual who I like to think of myself as pretty aware, pretty conscious of these different issues, particularly climate change, I like to think of myself as politically aware what you just said really struck a chord with me in terms of the idea of how COVID has really raised almost raised the stakes of my individual actions and what I can see, I can see that there are people around me, being impacted by COVID, and I can see that my wearing a mask can make a difference because it feels so immediate in a way that I don't think I've ever felt about my individual actions in respect to a policy before. I've personally been tested twice for COVID after displaying symptoms thankfully both tests were negative, and I was following the policies that have been put forward by our healthcare system in getting those tests, but I had never before really thought about how that really is almost a really direct feedback in terms of, I get tested I informed my friends that my test came back negative and we feel safer, whereas my take actions like recycling or turning out the lights if I'm not using them. I don't feel that same feedback from the climate crisis. And that's something I never really thought about before.
Sebastian 11:06
At the same time, I think we also have to be careful, no of that immediate feedback in the sense that some of these small actions that we take in individual action like wearing a mask or like recycling can make us feel more comfortable in other areas greater risk like we'll wear a mask and they will feel more comfortable being at a gathering, or will recycle, so then we'll be less likely think about the structural drivers of the environmental crisis. I think it goes hand in hand, know the importance of taking individual action without having this individual action inhibit more structural change.
Leslie Anne 11:45
And that's it for our interview today. Thank you, Sebastian so much for taking the time to be on our show. If you want to learn more about his work with the behavioral insights team, you can check out the link to his profile on their website in our show notes. And next, I'll talk to Kiran about her thoughts on the COVID and climate connection. So, Kiran, other than podcasting from your closet, how are you doing today?
Kiran 12:18
Just wanted to give a shout out at the beginning of this episode to Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who passed away last night. And honestly, I am devastated she. In addition to of course being an amazing US Supreme Court jurist but some amazing defense and practical reasoning and I think such an innately strong sense of fairness, also became a celebrity I think for all of the right reasons because she truly was such an inspiring figure. I think both to young, young women who wanted to practice law but also just in general.
Leslie Anne 13:28
Yeah, as well as both of us are recent law graduates. Not only was she inspiring and a role model to people around the world, but I know like I personally was deeply affected by her passing away because for me she's been such a role model and a celebrity in my life again for all the right reasons. And it's so heartbreaking. And it's so, you know, we lost her, and for a sense of fairness and her knowledge on her everything, but it's so heartbreaking that we all know she really wanted to make it past the next election. One of the last things that she shared with her granddaughter to share with the public was to not let them replace her until after the election. And it was so heartbreaking to me that she was trying to hold on for so long for all of us and not necessarily for herself.
Kiran 14:24
Yeah I read something that I really appreciated which just spoke to the burden that we placed on women, the fact that she couldn't retire, because so much hinged on her and she understood that and she tried her very best, and almost inhuman effort I think a great personal cost to herself, and I really, I really appreciate that so deeply, I think that's a huge sacrifice.
Leslie Anne 14:46
And I know there are people who will criticize her for not having retired, during the Obama years, and not having made space on the court, and I think that's also something that's so frustrating to me because she is in the literal sense of the word a precedent setting woman who we wanted to ask her to retire and to have her step down for our convenience.
Kiran 15:06
Yeah. The thing is I guess that was never on her that was never her responsibility to stop the political dynamics of the US Supreme Court from evolving as they have her job was to be on the court and it was on all of the other institutions to ensure that the election of justices you know continued to be a fair and equitable process. I think if anything there is to take away the idea that, now that's on others. It's our responsibility to make sure that more justices like her, you know, fair minded rationales and generous and understanding of societal dynamics for under, you know underprivileged and oppressed groups in society are elected to the Supreme Court.
Leslie Anne 15:48
And I think it is really important
to remember that she literally asked us to keep the fight going in her last two years and we need to take up that fight now. And so, as much as we want to maybe feel sad and feel depressed and feel defeated. We can't do that.
Kiran 16:11
So that was a great interview with Sebastian.
Leslie Anne 16:15
I thought so too was a lot of fun to interview him. It was really interesting to hear about his work in a way that even I hadn't heard about it before. Did you have maybe a favorite part you wanted to start with.
Kiran 16:28
Yeah, something that struck me, I think, was when he talked about scale and what the human mind is good at comprehending and what it's not going to comprehend. So, I've known this for some time and I think this is one of the fundamental questions of how the climate movement is evolved, is that human brains aren't very good at, receiving large numbers, and I can recognize that in myself, for example, I did not realize the scale of 1 billion versus 1 million, and how you know when you hear a billionaires, the concept of a billion dollars. I think I can feel the largeness of that number. And I think that's true, the scale of COPPA deaths because I remember back in March, when I believe it was in Italy, I think they started having 10,000 new cases a day. And that felt that felt really big. And now when I hear case numbers that are, you know, just of a much larger scale than that, I find that like the additional largeness of those numbers and what they mean, I think, like my brain can perceive it and also maybe it's become numb to it.
And I think that's the same thing is true, climate change, where we hear these numbers and people try to use these various metaphors and visualize them, I think, to varying degrees of success, but me as one person it's hard. It's hard to grasp
exactly what
Leslie Anne 17:56
I think especially what you said about the COVID cases, because for me in Ontario as we're recording this, we're looking at case numbers that are around 300 high 200, in terms of dealing case numbers. And to me those numbers seem really scary because I can picture, our year in law school was 200 people roughly, so I can relate to that being. Wow, that would be like our year and then seven people every day, getting COVID, that's a lot of people. But when we talk about those numbers like 10,000 that I can't picture in a relatable way, I can understand that it's a large number and it's scary but it doesn't hit me in kind of an almost emotional way the same way, is I can't relate to it.
Kiran 18:43
Yeah, you don't get the visceral reaction.
Leslie Anne 18:45
Yeah, exactly.
Kiran 18:47
So, I think if there is a lesson to be drawn from these metaphors and statistics are to an argument.
We need to connect. You know, connect to the other ways in which it affects our lives, the current the implications of high numbers for various metrics that people really care about the connection between a certain number in the economy, or your health, or your kids safety as well I think those numbers. For example, if it was as many cases means that your child is more likely to contract in the classroom. I think that those numbers had more personally, and I think in terms of climate activism climate activists have started doing those kinds of things to connect you in your own life the impacts of climate change versus as an abstract steal of energy.
Leslie Anne 19:43
I think that's actually a really interesting opportunity for connection to motivational interviewing practices like motivational interviewing, letting you learn what are those things that people care about that you can then apply to behavioral science driven policy and understanding how to communicate with the larger public to meet those goals. It's a really important thing that we understand how there's a lot of different steps to these things, and we can influence the way we think and talk and make policy around climate change every step of the process. Not just any single step.
Kiran 20:17
I think it's worth saying that this doesn't mean that humans are bad or selfish, it just means that we're humans, and this is what our brains react when it's impossible to hold all of the pain in the world in oneself effectively, instead of understanding that as a bug as one of us as a human slot something that we should understand as a feature and then we should develop policy techniques to work with that.
Leslie Anne 20:40
That's really true. It doesn't make us a bad person to not be able to understand the numbers now level of suffering. I was thinking about that when Sebastian talked about how we use our fast brain, and we use all these cues and these mental shortcuts, because we wouldn't be able to consciously make every single decision we have to make in a day. Our brains will be too overwhelmed, and I think it's really interesting to also talk about the fast rate in a way that is positive and how can we create cues for people that help them make decisions that are good for everybody and use appropriate.
Kiran 21:16
Yeah, like how we can work with the tendencies that humans are programmed towards in a positive way.
Leslie Anne 21:22
Yeah, especially when so much of the conversation, the last six months has been about how it's a problem. And I think it's really helpful to talk about how we can use this aspect of our brain in a way to make things better for everybody.
Kiran 21:38
Also, in my mind, one of the lessons of COVID that's been impressed upon me is how the types of things that have been a success or failure are largely analogous as sort of an abbreviated version of failures might involve. For example, resilient societies and societies with strong instincts towards the public health good have fared better, because people are more willing to follow collective action and help make things better for everyone sees societies with certain types of leaders fared better. And we see policies that as we've mentioned, you know really impressed upon the citizen sort of the idea that like this is the primary thing that we need to solve in order to be able to access other parts of the life, not a false choice between COVID and the economy or between COVID and freedom that in order to have a strong economy and to have strong personal freedom you need to address this problem first to create room for those other spaces to grow. And then you see a lot of parallels between climate where we talk about personal freedoms in the context of maybe you know the freedom to drive places, you know, freedom of mobility freedom to eat certain things to live your life a certain way and talk about the economy as well. And you know, we present acting on climate change as a choice between the economy in between freedoms but actually having a healthy climate is a prerequisite to a strong economy and to the maintenance of our personal freedoms.
Leslie Anne 23:15
There's also a really interesting aspect where, in some ways, COVID I find actually empowers your individual freedom, in the sense that I am free to make choices like washing my hands wearing a mask. Social distancing that actually generate a public good. And so it's not only that is enabling us to be able to have those freedoms, but it's, I can actually use my freedom in my ability to contribute positively to this issue, which is something that with other issues climate change included doesn't always feel that way because there's so many systemic factors contributing to the issue that sometimes it feels like my individual actions don't matter.
Kiran 24:01
Yeah, the story is complicated by me think all the special interests at play there. And the way the dynamics have developed. But I think, you know, I think maybe one positive human instinct that we really can leverage is that humans want to feel like they're a part of something, myself included. We all want to feel like we belong in our communities and societies and I think that that's potentially a powerful driving force. You know I think we've seen that with success with COVID and they think that we can echo that success and replicate it in certain climate change direction as well.
Leslie Anne 24:40
Totally. I know here in Toronto, a really interesting example of that is some of the community care programs that have started up like the People's Pantry who are providing free meals to folks who are impacted by COVID, folks who can't go out people have lost jobs. And not only are they providing a practical service but they're building connections within the community that will last me on COVID. And I think those kinds of community care programs will be so important in addressing climate change as well, not only from a perspective of mitigation, as we feel effects of climate change, for example, community care programs that happen in places that have been hit by forest fires in the aftermath, things like that. But also, leveraging those networks and those community care systems to bring people together to take action. preventatively as well.
Kiran 25:38
For all of the criticism about people what people aren't doing. I think that there's much that people are doing. When I look around, and I look at the fact that we've normalized mask wearing in the place that I live, and everyone just does it. And, you know, we wash our hands, and people willingly lock themselves down like I think that me, have to hold ourselves to high standards for what is right and I think it's important to acknowledge the personal sacrifices that people have made for the greater for the greater health of our community.
Leslie Anne 26:11
I wonder how we can make people feel like they're engaged in collective action in the same way for climate change. With COVID, and I'm waiting in line at the grocery store and we're all socially distanced less so now these become more normal, but in the early days sometimes I would chat, two meters apart for the person in front of me in line about, about the fact that we're social distancing and about how tough it is but we're working hard, and you know, we would apologize when we accidentally stepped within a meter of somebody something that normally would have been fine to do as you were trying to pass them in the grocery store, but comparable situations for climate change, don't come to mind as easily for how we can make people feel part of that collective action, outside of for example, protesting which inherently is a collective action but how can we bring communities together, to take action on climate change in the same way. I don't know that I expect you to have an answer. This is something I'm thinking about now.
Kiran 27:11
Maybe goes back to what we discussed in the second episode of motivational interviewing and how we talk to people with climate change, the places in the world where mass squaring has become polarized have become polarized because people see it as this judgment that it's not just about the greater good it's become a battle between personal freedom and collective freedoms as if these are in complete opposition to one another way that the climate conversation has been positioned for so long and now what people are trying to change is that it's not about your personal freedoms to live your life as you see fit, or the health of our society. It's that these two things are actually intrinsically linked together. And in order to enhance your personal freedoms to stay healthy. In the case of COVID, you need to do things important to take certain actions like wearing a mask green positioning the conversations that have become normal and non-confrontational, and non-polarized and casually talk to a stranger about maybe the impacts of climate change are about the things that you're doing, in order to solve it that is a massive task, but I think that if we're going to draw the parallel that's where we want to be going.
Leslie Anne 28:22
The idea of being able to chat to my favorite barista at the coffee shop I go to about climate change the way I talk about social distancing and COVID is like a dream idea, because it is something that, you know, we still kind of maybe don't talk politics with strangers at first, and climate change is still viewed as a political idea. When it is really is a fact of life, the same way COVID is.
Kiran 28:50
It talking about climate change but there just is such a missing part of the conversation, you know to get a stranger excited for offshore seaweed farming for so many reasons for ocean cleaning and its carbon shopping and its food providing abilities to be able to tell somebody about that, and without it feeling like an attack would be a really great place to get excited about climate solutions.
Leslie Anne 29:25
Big missed opportunity, but I would love to see myself and other people really embracing more.
Kiran 29:31
Yeah, I feel as this the conversation is stuck in a place of ignorance and panic so if we acknowledge it, it means that we're acknowledging it's too late, so we acknowledge it, because those two things are logically linked together. If we were able to get to a place of it's happening, it's not too late. Let's talk instead about the many many exciting things that we can do that have all of these side benefits for making our lives better. And that's just a much better place conversationally to be going. and I actually think that it would in some ways be easier than talking about open because a lot of climate solutions involve less personal sacrifice and more cool things than wearing a mask, than climate solutions can be so exciting.
Leslie Anne 30:15
I know you were kind of joking about the seaweed farming but I'm just so in love with that idea.
Kiran 30:22
Oh, I'm not, I'm not joking at all that's maybe my favourite climate solution.
Leslie Anne 30:27
I just love picturing all of the otters in the seaweed and all of the fish, and like, can we make it an eco-tourism thing we can go diving in a little seaweed forest.
Kiran 30:40
So, I think that even though climate change is a bigger task to tackle there's more to be done. You know, because it infiltrates all areas of our life there's also more to be excited about, there's so many ancillary benefits of all these solutions,
Leslie Anne 30:54
between our conversation now and my interview Sebastian. I think what I'm really taking away from this is the power of the human brain and the way we understand how our brains work and how people actually interact with the ideas and policy and interact with their opportunities to make change. There's so much potential there to not only make policy that's easy for people to follow. And to make policies that affect the things people actually needed to affect, but also when we understand our brains. It also helps us try to set up our lives in a way where for example we can live in harmony with their natural environment. It lets us in our personal lives better understand the decisions we're making, and how we can make decisions that contribute to climate solutions or to covid solution is we better understand our own decisions are made and I think that's a really exciting thing, and I would really encourage folks to take some time and try to be cognizant throughout the day about why are you making the decisions you're making, and when you learn about a new COVID policy when you learn about a change to the mask wearing recommendations for example or the number of people who can gather and if you're resistant to that policy maybe think about why like what is it that you don't like about and try to understand the way you react to policy and rules. And that's not to say that there's a right or wrong, wrong way to react, but I think it's just really interesting to really consider our fast brains. And the way we're reacting to things. And the way it influences our decision making.
Kiran 32:26
You know upon further reflection, you might think, like this, this regulation, this climate action position poorly I think we can do better. And that means that we should and that means that we should rethink how we can present policies and narratives in a way that they are the best of our human instincts and not the worst.
Leslie Anne 32:47
And if you find any climate policies that you think are positioned in a way that doesn't make sense and doesn't use the best of our human instincts, let us know.
Kiran 32:57
Share your thoughts share your examples with us, we'd love to hear them. Share them on Instagram, or Twitter or Facebook, or your choice of platform.
Leslie Anne 33:06
and you can find the links to all of our social media o our website rebalancingact.ca.
Kiran 33:14
Now is a time for something that's a little bit, more than a little bit fun. I love climate allies.
Leslie Anne 33:20
I know. I think it's one of my favorite parts. For this week's climate allies. This is, I think, one of my favorite potential places for ally ship to happen. And there's a really fun tic toc video to demonstrate this that I will be including in the show notes. Please watch it It's so good. Thank you, Sebastian for actually sharing it with me. What I really want to see happen coming out of COVID is in the last six months, actually more than that probably the last nine months now. We have learned so much about the way epidemiologists are communicating with the public and what is and isn't working, years from now, COVID will be used as a case study I am sure for science communication, and the communication around pandemics and Epidemiology to the public. What I would love to see is for conversations to happen between epidemiologists and climate scientists, about what can be learned from the communication that happened during COVID, is it happened on such a fast timeframe. And about a subject that people didn't know about. And what can we learn from that, for climate scientists who are in a slightly different position, because so many of us have preconceived notions about climate change, but we're entering a stage of urgency that in many ways didn't exist before climate science. And I think there's so much we can learn, and I would love to see this happen.
The love of science is a strong uniting force and that there is potential for ally ship and maybe it's already happening.
I hope there is an epidemiologist or client, listening to this and you're already doing this. Now, I hope it's happening we get so siloed sometimes that we don't learn from others the way we can, but I think this is such a great opportunity for some shared learning
Kiran 35:25
We’re just putting it out to the world, please ally.
And we appreciate you.
Tune in next week.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
