Hurricane Shannon - Mid-west can weather this storm

AS YOU read this the people of Jamaica will be counting the cost of Hurricane Dean and others on the shores of the Gulf of Mexico will be braced for what is expected to be an even greater onslaught from that source.

Conventional wisdom suggests that climate change has been influenced by human activity and has contributed to the contemporary ferocity of nature. Hurricane Dean and its recent predecessors are thought to be manifestations of those new extremes.

This weekend’s earnest protesters at Heathrow, who want the aviation industry curtailed, believe the environmental consequences of our insatiable appetite for air travel is having too great an impact on the planet’s wellbeing. They believe that Hurricane Dean’s 145mph winds and 20 inches of rain are just some of the frightening consequences of our flying habit.

That view might have found new supporters in Jamaica over the last few hours but is unlikely to cause any great reduction in the numbers of Irish people booking Christmas shopping weekends in New York.

Conventional wisdom also suggests that the golden age of air travel is a thing of the past. Ever-increasing demands for oil — and its anticipated scarcity — will make air travel too expensive. The environmental impact will become unsustainable. The tremendous security needed to combat terrorists, as well the sheer mind-numbing discomfort at some airports, will make many people reluctant to travel by air.

Ironically, all of this combines to suggest that our continuing preoccupation with the Shannon/Heathrow decision may be nothing more than some Luddite last stand, a requiem for an ancien régime not yet recognised as being of the past.

Some of the most animated voices attacking the decision sounded more like advocates from some Wild West frontier trying to convince Union Pacific to open a railhead in their town so they could ship cattle east rather than voices who understood the reality of an economy based on services and information technology or the reality of geographical marginalisation.

It is equally ironic that this decision, now seen as such a terrible threat, such a terrible injustice, may in time be seen as the starting point for some new way of doing business. A way of doing business that relies on the exchange of ideas and delivering services rather than the physical presence of the participants so central to the idea of “connectivity”.

These are the innovations imagined when we speak of making a rewarding and sustainable place for ourselves at the edge of the world’s knowledge-based economy. Access to Shannon was never the main attraction to those who did business there; it was the capability of the people there to be innovative and to deliver on time and on budget to world-class standards.

Though an artery to world markets has been cut and a great advantage diminished that human ability remains intact.

The Taoiseach’s intervention yesterday afternoon, his first direct statement on the affair, signals that there is no prospect of his browbeating Aer Lingus to sustain the service but rather that the region, with the help of Government, must resolve the issue in some other way.

Like the people of Jamaica this morning, the people of the mid-west will feel they have been dealt a poor hand. Both groups have a similar choice; allow the storm to change their lives or change their lives to try to overcome the storm.