(HOST) The volcanic ash which spewed out from Iceland this past week brought international air travel to a virtual halt. But as commentator and veteran ABC correspondent Barrie Dunsmore tells us this morning, the consequences of this crisis are much more extensive than it may have seemed at first glance.
(DUNSMORE) Who would have thought that the ripple effect of a volcanic eruption in Iceland would be so extraordinarily far reaching? The airlines companies report that in less than a week some 95,000 flights had to be cancelled. They say this will cost them about $2 billion.
But this is just the tip of the volcano’s total impact. Millions of passengers were directly affected – many of them stranded in foreign cities thousands of miles from their homes. A lot of these people could not afford hotels and restaurants and have camped out for days in airport terminals. My compassion meter did not move too much for the Boca Raton dentist who had been vacationing in Europe and was complaining about the income he was losing because he couldn’t back to Florida. But inevitably, thousands of people who can not afford it will lose wages because they missed work.
One thing that became evident in this crisis, is that much more than we probably imagined, we humans of the 21st century are crucially dependent on international air transport. Here are a few random examples.
-In Japan, a large Nissan factory was shut down and thousands of auto workers laid off because key components for the cars are made in Ireland.
– Kenya was unable to ship its gourmet vegetables and cut flowers to Europe, meaning within a day or two its exports were worthless so five thousand Kenyan field workers were immediately laid off.
– Right here in Vermont, 30 Greek history students and four faculty members at Champlain Valley Union High School were scheduled to leave this week for a school trip to Greece. But after driving to Montreal for their flight to Athens they were turned away by Air France. It remains unclear what will happen to their trip and/or what refunds they might receive.
– Even President Barack Obama had to miss the funeral of the Polish president, because Air Force One was just as vulnerable to volcanic ash as any other jet aircraft.
But for all of the turmoil created by this crisis, I sense a wide spread resignation that this was an Act of God so there is not much any of us can do. Perhaps. Yet one explanation of why this particular volcanic eruption in Iceland was stronger and different than past ones is intriguing. Apparently, a glacier atop part of the volcano has been melting and water from the melt made its way down into the molten ore beneath the surface. According to the Washington Post, this "produced steam quite suddenly and the volcano popped its top like a shaken soda bottle."
I do not have the expertise to claim that as there was a melting glacier involved, what happened in Iceland might be tied to global warming. But if nothing else, this crisis demonstrates how even one small, volcanic event can have huge global consequences. Considering the approaching perils of climate change, it seems to me there is an important lesson here.
(TAG) You can find more commentaries by Barrie Dunsmore on-line at VPR-dot-net.