Iceland's volanco revealed the deep ignorance of jet-setters

[Elaine Kirk]

Last month‘s volcanic eruption demonstrated the danger of mistaking the global village metaphor for reality

The Ecologist
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We operate with an in-built assumption that sophisticated, complex and market societies are better able to support their citizens. However, the recent volcanic eruption in Iceland demonstrated that, in many ways, this level of sophistication makes us more vulnerable.

It was at the central station in Prague that I first came across stranded travellers displaced from air to rail. They were like living exemplars of the lack of resilience that sophisticated market economies encourage. High-heeled and uncomfortably dressed, they had no sense of the distances involved in their travel, the cultures of the countries they might encounter. Given their reliance on money to substitute for any other sort of understanding, I was surprised to find that they did not even realise that the Czech Republic is not part of the Eurozone.

These misplaced tourists, stranded outside the comfort-zone of their air-freight bubble, were experiencing a systemic breakdown that had clearly disturbed them, but it was their vulnerability that disturbed me