Sustainability, the Concorde Fallacy and mechanical pencils

Published April 16, 2008

by dbazely

Sometimes I wonder if a lot of unsustainable human behaviour is an example of the Concorde Fallacy, which is basically the idea that "we keep on throwing good money away after bad". We North American humans just seem to keep carrying on with our wasteful behaviours simply because we did them before. Why do people keep driving gas guzzling sport utility vehicles when there's plenty of evidence that they are not the safest vehicles on the road? There's actually lots of research into this kind of behaviour, including that described by the New Scientist article about why people should call it quits but don't.

I have done a lot of field work in a lot of remote places - including the shores of Hudson Bay, in what is now Wapusk National Park, and the main island of the St. Kilda archipelago, the wettest and windiest place in Britain. If there is one thing I absolutely hate in the field, it's mechanical pencils. A basic lead (graphite) pencil and a sharpener are much more reliable for field data notes (and btw NEVER write your field notes in ink - it will run if they get wet).

I found myself hating mechanical pencils again last week. It was the first writing tool that I grabbed for writing a grocery list. Although I never flew on the fabulously expensive Concorde supersonic jet, we somehow inherited one of the "loot" bags that the passengers received! It contained stuff like a cashmere scarf and a posh mechanical pencil - that simply doesn't work properly, but I couldn't bear to throw it away. Well, I finally threw this one out, after I photographed it. Of course, I felt guilty about disposing of it, and would welcome ideas for recycling mechanical pencils and disposable pens.

To ecologists and evolutionary biologists, the Concorde is famous as the inspiration for the term "Concorde Fallacy" coined by Prof. Richard Dawkins. The cost of developing the Concorde Aircraft was enormous, but the British and French governments kept on supporting it to justify past investments (but check out the British Airways "the taxpayers recouped the investment - really they did", site). Dawkin's used it to describe the tendency of some animals to carry on investing in an activity, simply because they have invested a lot in it in the past. Of course, the reasons for this kind of behaviour usually turn out to be rather complex. When I think of unsustainable behaviour in this context, it puts the challenge facing humanity in a sobering context.

Dawn Bazely, very happy to not be on St. Kilda in early April.

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