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After the bank bailout that cost us all way too much money, a Europe-wide taxpayer-funded financial support scheme for the airline industry is being discussed in response to planes being unable to fly because of the Icelandic volcano eruption. British Airways is losing around £25m ($38m) a day. Easyjet is losing up to £5m ($7.6m) a day. They have access to borrowing and can cope with the financial hit just so long as it doesn’t last much longer.

Supermarkets have announced that supplies of imported flowers, fruit and vegetables are beginning to run low. Many businesses reliant upon air freight are losing money while perishable goods at home and abroad are rotting in warehouses.

Nobody really has any idea when the outpouring of ash and the volcanic activity will end. This crisis reveals the Achilles heel of globalisation: the more interconnected we are, the less self-sufficient as nations, the more reliant we are on specific forms of transport, then the easier it is for mother nature (or, for that matter, terrorists) to throw a spanner in the works. Countries untouched by the ash fallout from the volcano will suffer as well—for example, America cannot conduct much of its trade with Europe while the crisis continues.

Yesterday, Iceland’s Prime Minister could be heard on BBC Radio 4 expressing concerns that another volcano close to Eyjafjallajoekull may be stirred to eruption by its already active neighbour. If this happens, flights over Europe could stop for a month. The economic consequences of that would be disastrous across the whole world.

And before anyone thinks this might be good for the environment at least, with a massive drop in CO2 emissions while there are no flights operating, you’d be wrong to espouse this idea. Volcanoes pump lots of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, including methane which is said to be 100 times more impactful than CO2. Volcanoes have always had a hugely significant role to play in changing the Earth’s climate.

Volcanic activity should not be seen as putting the brakes on global warming; instead, it can accelerate the increase in temperatures in ways impossible to model and predict.

There’s something ironic (as well as scary) in the idea that a single natural event in a bankrupt country (that won’t yet pay back what it owes to the UK) could kill off the hope of a relatively quick recovery from the biggest planet-wide recession in history. Regardless, we can only pray that our governments don’t allow flights to resume until it is safe for them to do so. Contrary to popular mythology, it is possible to survive a financial nosedive but there’s no way back for anyone who dies in completely avoidable air disasters.

But what of all those hundreds of thousands of business travellers and tourists stranded around the world? Getting them back by boat should be the number one priority to arrange. My partner’s own parents are currently stranded in Bangkok and should have flown home on Saturday. As people run out of money they will turn to their embassies for help.

Something should be done today, right now, to avoid our citizens being individually bankrupted by this volcanic crisis, to make sure they are fed, given accommodation and brought back to their families as soon as possible—but a cruise ship from Bangkok, we’ve found, is a journey of two weeks. What happens when people don’t go back to work after their holidays because they can’t? Never mind the money the airlines and companies are losing, worrying though this is. It’s people who should come first. Bring them home. Now.

Source: The Spicy Cauldron

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