But half the people in the world still live on less than two dollars a day. One in four people who will die this coming year will do so from HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria, or from something as basic and age-old as drinking dirty water.

I traveled to Rwanda in April for a piece in the September issue. Until you actually go to a place where these conditions are a reality, not just abstract facts on a page, it's hard to understand what it all really means. Small kids sick with malaria—very dangerous at that age—because their families weren't able to buy mosquito nets. Stories of babies dying simply because they got diarrhea and their mothers didn't have rehydration tablets—something so easily available and affordable elsewhere. It's heartbreaking. These conditions are not exclusive to Rwanda, they are happening in many parts of the world.

Now, we could all sit around and do nothing and say that these are not our problems; that governments should deal with all this. Governments, of course, must play a big role—they are the only ones that can set and enforce rules on such things as minimum wages or the child sex trade or deforestation. But the fact is that we can all make a difference—individuals, non-profit organizations, businesses, the media—and it is imperative that we try to do so.

Historically, after all, some of the best ideas have come from the private and citizen sectors. And there's something else to consider: our changing understanding of what constitutes world crises.

It used to be that real threats had to do with the "hard issues of geopolitics: tensions between political systems, ideologies, and nation states. But the thinking is starting to change on that, and the focus is shifting to the so-called "soft issues: environmental destruction, lack of basic health care, substandard or nonexistent education, and religious and ethnic strife.

These problems are now increasingly thought to be as serious, as likely to profoundly affect all our futures, if not more so, than, say Russia's new aggressiveness or Iran's nuclear capability. The "soft issues, in other words, will very soon become the "hard ones.

I think that most of us now grasp that climate change is here and that we have to get our environmental house in order. I believe it's equally important to understand that we all have a stake in trying to solve these other problems--extreme poverty, say, or lack of healthcare and education. In our increasingly interconnected world, nothing good can come of hopelessness. Nothing is as dangerous—for us all—as people who have nothing to live for.

So what does all this have to do with the travel industry? You have the power to affect change through the experiences you offer your guests and customers and through the innovations you drive.

Some people criticize the act of travel as a self-indulgent pastime that is now increasingly harmful to the environment. But the fact is that nothing opens people's eyes like travel, nothing makes them see the world and understand it better than travel does. Travel breeds empathy.