Europeans are angry. The Iceland volcano has crippled air traffic, ruined vacations and threatened their economies. They want to know when it will stop belching ash. They want to know what can be done. Perhaps some sort of retaliation is in order.
Of course, this is not a forest fire that can be snuffed out with air drops and perimeter lines. This is a powerful, geologic event over which we have no control; perhaps it will stop in another week or perhaps, like Kilauea, it will erupt for decades. While we know that some volcanic events in geologic history persisted for thousands or even millions of years, we expect our modern natural disasters to be brief and relatively harmless. We choose to forget that the Toba Supervolcano nearly obliterated the human species 74,000 years ago and that Yellowstone is a time bomb that, some day, will destroy much of the North America.
While recent history is replete with earthquakes, tsunamis and volcanic eruptions, most have occurred in remote, under-developed regions of the globe, not directly impacting the economically powerful countries of the West. We have felt immune to such tragedies, assuming that our role is to rescue the hapless Third World victims. The Iceland volcano reminds us that we are all at risk on this evolving planet and that natural history continues to unfold.
