Traveling has always been a great way to find ourselves. As classic novels like Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and On the Road suggest, it seems we must break free from our day-to-day lives in order to better understand who we are and our relationship with the world.

If our travel patterns today are any indication, we are becoming much more globally minded. Only 21 percent of the U.S. population has a passport, but the travel industry is growing rapidly: There were more than 800 million international tourists worldwide in 2006, and that number is expected to grow about 4 percent in 2007.

This global mindset is reflected in the growth of ecotourism. Probably the fastest growing sector of travel, ecotourism has been exploding in part because it’s a relatively new concept, but also because more and more people want to get in touch with the natural world and see it before it disappears.

One of the contradictions inherent in ecotourism is that air travel is unsustainable—at least until someone builds an airplane like the one on our cover. Presently, jet fuel accounts for about 12 percent of transit-related carbon emissions in the U.S., but we’re finding more and more ways to reduce this impact. For example, now when you buy your tickets through travelocity.com, you have the option of buying carbon offsets for the emissions you’ll produce during your flight. Ideally, the entire process of getting from one place to another would involve only renewable, sustainable resources—but for now, offsets are a step in the right direction.

Today there are an unlimited number of ways for us to see the world. Over the past year, Plenty has featured stories about volunteer vacations and culinary holidays. In this issue, we offer you a new, green way to immerse yourself in India (“Be Our Guests,” page 52), and we also examine the changes taking place at two environmentally conscious resorts—one older, one newer—on  the U.S. Virgin Island of St. John (“Paradise Lost?” page 58). But no matter where you want to go, we want to help get you there in a greener way, so check out our complete guide for eco-friendly travel (“The Eco Travel Tool Kit,” page 44).

There was a time when people traveled mostly for trade or religious purposes. While that’s not always the case today, hitting the road is still a wonderful way to learn about our world. Travel has always been, and will continue to be, an important part of Plenty.

-Mark Spellun