Monday, April 19, 2010

Volcanoes and ash plumes: Ruminations on global interconnectedness

The most recent news from Iceland is mixed: new tremors in the volcano, but a lower ash cloud. That should help free up air travel and help thousands of stranded passengers get to their destinations. Most of us know somebody who got grounded, and was trying in vain to get home from a business trip, or to fly to Boston from Europe for the fabled marathon there today.

The situation reminds us that we do live on a small planet where all our lives are interconnected.

Jim Gordan, who blogs from the UK at Living Wittily, reflects thoughtfully on this in his post “when the global becomes local and the international becomes personal.” Here is an excerpt:
Ease and safety of travel has become such an integral part of what we take for granted as normality, that this past week has created a new level of awareness of just how vulnerable technology is to the elemental physical forces that drive and shape our planet.
Easy now to slip into apocalyptic scenarion; but just as easy to assume that once the direction of the wind changes the situation will revert to normal. Somewhere between apocalyptic meltdown and complacent unconcern is the harder reality of having created a world dependent on air flight, air freight and air defence systems. And for the first time total shut-down has simply negated that assumption. The unprecedented now has precedent. In a world where risk assessment, risk management and rehearsed emergency scenarios have become standard activities of corporate bodies, it seems this particular combination of circumstances escaped the risk assessors and the Hollywood script writers.
Jim continues to write about the upcoming British elections, which may or may not be of interest to you depending on where you live, but he concludes his post with a call for prayer for the manifold needs of our world, and that is a message all can heed. 

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