When the sun heats up (and tourism declines)

By Barbara Anderson

These days the media have been filled with images of Rome, Athens, Madrid where thousands of tourists walk under a scorching sun and are desperate to find a cool place, water for hydration or a place to take shelter from temperatures so high that many hotspots have been forced to close, as the Acropolis itself had to close due to the danger of receiving visitors at 42 degrees Celsius.

In July, average temperatures are already at least 1.1 degrees higher in the entire northern hemisphere than during the pre-industrial era and in the United States, Europe and Asia (and Mexico) we are suffocating with a phenomenon that seems destined to repeat itself, the 'heat domes'. I see pictures of tourists in Europe next to urban billboards with the temperature (always above 40 degrees) and I remember the first images we saw of collapsed hospitals in Italy due to Covid 19. It seemed to us something apocalyptic that was happening, like the great war, on the other side of the sea. But, in global times, it was only a few weeks before those brutal postcards would have Mexican faces.