Just this last June, LA Times columnist Dan Neil astutely observed that "on a fundamental level, ecotourism is a contradiction in terms" and so he begged his readers, "Please don't go."

The premise of his argument was simple-- how can hundreds of tourists flock to the most fragile ecosystems in our world to "see them before they go" and yet not play a role in precipitating their very collapse? Even when people travel the best way that they can, carrying out what they carry in and supporting local communities with fair wages... there is still a premium to be paid for adventures into the bowels of the Amazon or to the top of Mt Kilimanjaro.

Even OnEarth's cover story for it's Winter 2009 issue touches on the topic as it relates to less exotic locales when it asks "are we loving the West to death?"

Frankly this leaves the idealistic youth of the world (like myself) in an awkward position: can we see the world without killing it?

Over Thanksgiving I spent several days with my father talking about plans and holidays and my upcoming adventures to far-away places... and of course, right on key, he asks "how can you fly to Guatemala from New York and still be an environmentalist?"

My sub-par answer was that while I was there I intended to eat very very little in order to compensate for the carbon emissions of my flight. And then I changed the subject.

But as they days have passed and I have launched whole heartedly into my obsessive pre-vacation research, the ambiguous gray area between "travel is bad" and "travel is good" has continued to grow. I cannot speak to other countries-- or even with any expertise about Guatemala-- but the gist of my readings is that within the small country of Guatemala (it's only slightly smaller than the state of Oregon)there is an abundance of biologically unique ecosystems. In fact according to the World Conservation Monitoring Center, some 1246 known species of amphibians, birds, mammals and reptiles live in Guatemala, and of these, about 6.7% exist in no other country.

But after 36 years of civil war, widespread poverty (as much as 75% of the population is below the poverty line), and the ever increasing globalization of the food trade, Guate's rainforests have slowly been slashed and burned to make way for agriculture: coffee that is sold to North Americans, Cardamom that is sold to the Middle East, or even sometimes simply to provide land for subsistence farming.

And, then the complication, there is a growing source of income that is leading to increased rainforest preservation and funneling income into indigenous cultures: Tourism.

Which I believe, brings us full circle back to Dan Neil.