The London Book Fair had a spacious feel about it. There were plenty of people there, but no crowds, no queues, not at all what I'm used to at international conferences at Earl's Court. The likely reason was of course the grounding of all flights over Britain because of the Icelandic volcano. Several stalls stood empty, presumably because the books and representatives could not be flown in. Less than ten percent perhaps were affected, but the gaps were still noticeable, especially in the areas devoted to the smaller publishers. This must have been heartbreaking to the firms concerned.
The sky over London was a sight to behold. Something to be seen only once in a lifetime. It was clear blue, with not a contrail in sight. From Parliament Hill you could see all the way to the North Downs. With a demonstration like that, who can doubt the climatic impact of air travel? When flights resumed, contrails once more began to criss-cross the skies and spread out into a general haze. Of course, the natural ebb and flow of weather conditions may have been playing a none too subtle part, so what can be deduced, scientifically speaking, from five days' cessation of all air travel is hard to say.
One thing has been made clear to everybody, which may turn out to be a blessing. It is that the global economy we have grown used to, in which air travel plays so great a part, is not an unvarying state of the world, but is as fragile as our perch on the blue ball we are all balancing on. Perhaps the people who clamour for business as usual know it perfectly well—and know that it is necessary to press hard for the preservation of the status quo in order that we may all continue to enjoy the luxury of living in the manner we have grown used to.
It remains then to ask whether we just have to accept that the Western world is careering towards the buffers and that there is nothing we can do about it, except to enjoy what life currently offers us? We should be grateful to Al Gore for pointing out that mankind has become a force of nature in its own right. But as far as we know, we are the only force of nature capable of mustering a collective will to govern our mass behaviour. We have demonstrated this by our capacity to declare war on a global scale, and (more importantly) to govern that enterprise centrally. We have, over the last few hundred years, collectively declared war on the environment, although not with the benefit of a centralised high command. We have been like irresponsible adolescents in the house of our mother Earth and father Air, adult enough to do real damage but still children enough to feel that our parents hold the reins and make all the rules. It is high time we grew up, in a collective sense.
Maybe world war is the only way we have ever properly demonstrated of organising ourselves globally. But we should recognise our true enemy, which is not the environment but our precarious balance on this blue ball of ours. The late and unlamented US Administration declared war on Terror, by which they really meant the regimes of justice and tolerance which terrorists were exploiting (consider their slogan: "no hiding place" ). Perhaps it is time to declare worldwide war on greed and stupidity. On the sort of greed and stupidity which can bring our global financial system to its knees, decimate our Parliament when the full extent of its corruption gets exposed, and clear our skies by overreliance on unsustainable means of transport which natural and not at all uncommon events like volcanic eruptions can totally disrupt.
Can we do it though without pulling down the house in which it flourishes? We all know about the boy who discovered Roast Pork —but how to achieve it without burning down the pigsty was another discovery to emerge much later. Charles Lamb set his fable in China, which is far enough away for us to believe anything about it. But maybe he was alluding to lessons to be learnt nearer home?
© 1992, 2009, Clark Nida.
website design:
leelamaria.com