The earth has done what all the terrorist organizations in the world, if they combined their resources and brainpower could never manage to do.
It’s shut down European airspace. For the fifth consecutive day now, major European airports are closed for business – that means millions of stranded passengers, billions in lost revenues and a crisis for the airline industry that they say is greater than the one they went through at the time of the attacks of 9/11.
On a positive note, the sunsets have been beautiful and there are less planes roaring overhead, and so less noise, less expensive fuel burnt up, and less carbon emissions.
And all because of one little country that no one had ever heard of a couple of years ago, but now seems to be incapable of keeping itself out of the news.
First Iceland had an economic meltdown, then it caused a few other countries to have another kind of meltdown by declaring its plans to be the world’s first official press freedom haven, and now its very geography is staging its own meltdown: a volcanic eruption that has covered half of Europe’s skies with fine mineral dust particles that are to planes what sand blasters are to stained glass windows.
Meanwhile in Iceland itself, life goes on as usual.
Photo by Flickr.com: Stephan Nevan
