ffutures | A neat idea for Tom Clancy to write...

For various reasons I've read the Evening Standard much more often than usual this week, and noticed that they're continuing their steady "London must have a new airport / Enlarged Heathrow or die" campaign, which I suspect may owe more than a little to the company's shareholding in British Airport Authority and/or a wilful disregard for alternatives - such as questioning the assumption that the current rise in aviation traffic will continue indefinitely.

One obvious reason why not is fuel prices, of course, and the possibility that sooner or later the stuff will genuinely run out, but there must be alternatives. The idea that came to mind is as follows:

Hollywood likes British villains, especially attacking the USA
Tom Clancy likes environmental groups as bad guys
People like disaster novels / movies
There seems to be a widespread disbelief in global warming in certain areas
Aircraft are perceived as being involved in global warming etc.
America owes a very high percentage of the world's aircraft
Fuel shortages might ground aircraft
Volcanoes have done a much better job in recent years.

Therefore the perfect Tom Clancy novel will involve a group of British ecoterrorists triggering American volcanoes (and eventually the Yellowstone supervolcano) so as to put so much dust into the air that virtually all aviation is grounded and most of the USA is destroyed.

It needs a bit of technobabble to explain why the dust, fumes etc. from the volcano are acceptable to the terrorists, of course, but I'm pretty sure Clancy could rise to the occasion.

I await my royalty cheque...