I was obliged to take three flights in the course of the pandemic, from Osaka to Santa Barbara, the place my 88 year-old mother had just emerged from hospital. A few weeks earlier, I had to fly from Japan to California—for a day—for a public event to which I had long been contractually dedicated. It can be a blessing for the environment if all of us traveled less. And nervousness about travel shall be larger subsequent season, and costs greater. But globalism, having spread from person to person for thus long, can’t be reversed. My journeys to North Korea have proven me what happens when people can not get to see the world first-hand.
