Amplifying the fatalistic streak that’s already implicit in eco-tourism, more travelers are visiting remote natural landscapes with the idea that it’s pretty much now-or-never:

From the tropics to the ice fields, doom is big business. Quark Expeditions, a leader in arctic travel, doubled capacity for its 2008 season of trips to the northern and southernmost reaches of the planet. Travel agents report clients are increasingly requesting trips to see the melting glaciers of Patagonia, the threatened coral of the Great Barrier Reef, and the eroding atolls of the Maldives, [travel industry trade journal editor Ken] Shapiro said…

What these travelers are chasing may be a modern-day version of an old human impulse — to behold an untrammeled frontier. Except this time around, instead of being the first to climb a mountain or behold a glacier-fed lake, voyagers like the Woodses are eager to be the ones to see things last.

It’s sort of like embarking upon a collector’s quest of the macabre. Imagine the photo slideshow: Here I am standing in front of some Amazonian fauna (that’s now extinct); here I am kneeling on top of Greenlandic tundra (it melted away ten years ago)…