Eyjafjallajökull erupt - Disruptions teach us a hard lesson

LIVING in a temperate climate we can easily forget how powerless we are in the face of destructive nature.

We can forget that virtually every human activity depends on a benign and forgiving natural world. We may have come to imagine, if not believe, that because we can harness nature – agriculture, nuclear power, genetic modification and great feats of engineering – we can control it.

Eyjafjallajökull has shown us otherwise and reminded us that we little more than bit players in a vast, almost unfathomable construct that remains beyond our full comprehension. Iceland’s volcano has delivered timely wake up call. Its eruption – the first since 1822 – has not been brought about by human activity but it shows how helpless, how utterly irrelevant our aspirations are in the face of natural disaster.