The global volcanic soap opera

Oh dear, oh dear. The sky has fallen down in Europe, and everyone is staying indoors for shelter.

I'm one of them, sending this missive from a charming cafe in Aquitaine in south-west France. I look at the posters of the feria (bull-fighting festivals) scheduled for the summer, gaze up at a cloudless blue sky, sip an espresso, and type these words with a contented sigh.

Never has the old aphorism "Think Globally, Act Locally" seemed more apposite. The nearest airports are at Bordeaux, Biarritz and Pau. They're all open, but all flights heading for Paris and points further north (such as the UK) are cancelled. The British Government is sending its navy to pick up several thousand distressed Brits (around 300,000 of us, apparently) and bring them back to what we sometimes refer to as Blighty.

It certainly does feel like we're all connected – the local actions of European governments are taken with a view to global consequence. The effects of the volcanic ash plume are certainly global, and are only just being felt.

Willie Walsh, Chief Executive of British Airways, has joined with KLM, the Dutch airline, and Germany's Lufthansa, in calling for a relaxation of the lockdown in the skies. BA is reported to be losing about £6 million (Dh33.8m) per day, while Air France is shedding a similar amount (the French are a little less outgoing than the Brits right now, it seems, with just 150,000 citizens displaced). Meanwhile, the unfortunate Kenyan farming industry is unable to ship its soft fruit and its vegetables (Kenya provides much of the UK's requirement for mangetout, among other vegetables.

So will the market decide when we allow death in the skies? If the Icelandic volcano erupts for two years non-stop, as it did with its last spurt of activity nearly 200 years ago, the only winners are going to be those who bought put options in the airline stocks when the plume was first reported. To the best of my understanding, none of the airlines is insured against this type of risk (because it's legally deemed an Act of God, and basically uninsurable). As a consequence, all the losses go to the bottom line.

Locality of action and globality of consequence are also manifested in the manic way so many people are using the internet. The lockdown in the skies has generated a surge in internet users and Tweeters, furious that they cannot influence events from their laptop and screaming their anger into the worldwide ether. As I write, there's a party of Britons in a specially chartered coach which has already left Barcelona and is on its way to Bordeaux, thence to Calais. After that, apparently, the plan is to book a crossing on a ferry to Dover.

I shall not be joining them. My own return flight to the UK was scheduled for the weekend, a couple of days before penning this piece. I have had to cancel my regular pilgrimage from London to that great engine of capitalism that is Shanghai as a consequence. But it would have been folly to attempt travel: a visit to the Bordeaux airport and train station reminded me of a scene from a war film, with lots of exhausted refugees sitting on their suitcases and weeping copiously.

The war comparison is perhaps not entirely without merit. The two companions I am trapped with in Aquitaine continue to stare into their iPhones and try to surf the internet and tap into booking systems for ferry crossings and plane trips. This is comically futile. Just as in war, the normal systems of travel and organisation fall apart when under global stress. The French national rail booking system has been as useful as the proverbial chocolate teapot during the crisis (a nice lady at a smaller local rail station suggested that if we really wanted to travel by train we all wait a couple of days until her own terminal might give her sensible information. In the meantime, she smiled, why didn't we enjoy the sunshine?).

The reasons for my sanguinity in the face of all this pan-European turmoil are simple enough. I have a long manuscript to work on, this column to write (both pleasurable occupations), and I own the place I'm staying in. If I were having an enforced stay in an expensive hotel, or I didn't have the secure feeling of being at home, then maybe the crisis would be troubling.

So what next in the global volcanic soap opera? I foresee a couple of scenarios.

First, the airlines are going to seek compensation from their local governments. I can almost hear the feelers being put out to each other by European airlines. They don't have insurance, and they don't fancy picking up the tab. So the banning authorities will be on the wrong end of a law suit. That's the nature of modern, hyper-litigious Western society. If the airlines could sue the volcano, they would. Sadly for them, neither it nor the Icelandic Government has any money.

Second, the environmental lobby will start bleating that the scuppering of so many European flights isn't really the good thing that those who are fanatical about carbon footprints might imagine.

For example, local food (as opposed to vegetables flown from Kenya to be consumed in Britain) isn't really as environmentally beneficial as is widely thought. The argument runs that heavily packaged food conveyed to supermarkets by lorry and airplane is in fact less damaging to the environment than locally sourced produce.

Aggregating the food at one retail point (eg, a supermarket) allows shoppers to make one trip (as opposed to ding a few kilometres in the car to the local farm to buy meat or bread). And the packaging is good for the longevity of the produce. Lots of simply wrapped local food go to waste, and may end up in an environmentally unfriendly land fill.

The critics will stop short of saying that globalism, the delicate mechanism of international, free-market capitalism, is a good thing, of course. But arguments like these will be mounted. Reducing the number of airplane flights might be thought to be giving many in the environmental lobby what they wished for. But some people just don't want what they wish for.

The motto of the aftermath of this volcano crisis, mark my words, is going to be "think globally, complain locally". That applies to the green lobby and the airlines alike.

- The author is a journalist, author and commentator on international business affairs

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