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Several planes of the Irish airline 'Low cost' Ryanair.EFE

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• Von der Leyen redoubles his commitment to the 'green agenda' for the economic and social reconstruction of the EU

A fortune teller warned him that he should not fly that year, that he saw an accident at his destination.

So Tiziano Terzani found the perfect excuse to do his job differently.

As a correspondent in Asia, he spent the next few months touring the continent by train, by bus, by car, by boat, even on foot;

in direct contact with landscapes and people, with their hopes and their most intimate fears.

I keep as a jewel the book in which he captured his experience, A fortune-teller told me.

Terzani rediscovers the pleasure of traveling slowly, of talking, of penetrating the places he passes through.

Those of us who have inoculated the travel virus have missed it a lot in this pandemic.

And now that we glimpse that we can travel again, it is time to consider how we do it.

Because tourism has become one of the great crossroads of our time and one of the battlefields of sustainability.

On the one hand, its enormous economic potential and its weight in the economy and development of many countries, including ours —more than 10% of global GDP, halved last year—;

on the other, its challenges: the anti-tourist movements, the struggle of cities and towns to avoid becoming mere theme parks without a soul, the insulting inequality, the lack of respect and interest in the communities, their enormous ecological impact.

It is estimated that the aviation industry generated (before the coronavirus hiatus) 2% of the total global carbon emissions;

that of cruise ships would be in similar amounts.

Perhaps it is time to end the absurdity of crossing the Atlantic for a weekend (which generates the same level of emissions as an average citizen in the European Union to heat their home for a whole year) or to review the model of those macro hotels floats that vomit hordes of tourists in a port for just a few hours without the traveler barely touching the place. It is not new. Do you remember

? The movie is from 1969, but

has triggered frenzied tourism in recent decades.

The changes go through the law.

The European Union, for example, has proposed to reduce CO2 from aviation by 60% by 2050. France aims to ban air travel that can be made by train in less than two and a half hours - a measure also included in the plan Spain 2050—.

But also because of individual attitudes.

It is time to regain rationality.

Traveling is, after all, an opportunity to get to know the human being better, wherever he is, and, incidentally, to get to know ourselves better.

Enjoy the summer and take good care of yourself.