Europe must be ready next time

IN the ageless contest between man and nature, nature reasserted its primacy for an entire week, crippling air travel around the world and sending shudders through the global economy.

Man is now studying the lessons of the volcanic eruption to see how to, if not tame it, at least live with it.

From science to politics, the cloud of volcanic ash that drifted into the bustling air corridors of Europe revealed the inadequacy of the response system to an unfamiliar disaster. It is leading to a thorough postmortem of an event that scientists say could recur any time – and perhaps with even greater severity.