Essential Skill #28: Grow Your Own Tomato

Did you know the tomatoes you buy in the grocery store weren't red when they were picked from the vine? They were still green, then artifially turned red by ethylene gas. Why? Because tomatoes travel approximately 1,500 miles to reach most customers. If they were picked ripe, our tomatoes would start to rot before we even get them home.

Did you know you're not supposed to refrigrate tomatoes? That's how they lose their flavor, and it changes their texture. Yet, that's exactly how tomatoes are shipped cross-country -- in refrigerated trucks.

To preserve its taste and to cut down on global warming-causing food miles, try Essential Skill #28 in The Live Earth Global Warming Survival Handbook:

Grow your own tomato.

"Until you've tasted a ripe tomato picked from your backyard," writes author David de Rothschild, "you might find it hard to believe that growing your own food is the way of the future."

There are thousands of tomato varieties to choose from, but de Rothschild suggests Miracle Sweet, Celebrity or Brandywine if growing outside and Pixie, Patio, Toy Boy or Small Fry if growing indoors over the winter. To learn how to grow your own tomatoes, click this link to "Tomato Essentials" from the National Gardening Association.

Essential Skill #27: Stock the Cellar

"Rising temperatures are already changing wines," writes author David de Rothschild in The Live Earth Global Warming Survival Handbook, "pushing harvest season earlier, raising alcohol levels, and, in the case of Oregon's pinot noirs, fueling a decade of world-class vintages."

So if you want to savor the wines of today that you love, follow Essential Skill #27 in de Rothschild's book:

Stock the cellar.

As sensitive as they are to temperature change, grapes growing in one region today won't grow there very well tomorrow. California's Napa Valley, for instance, may be completely unusable by 2100. Tuscany and Bordeaux are also at risk. As the world warms, cooler regions will become ideal for growing premium grapes for wine, such as England, Canada and Sweden.

In the meantime, some vineyards are doing all they can to maintain their health and longevity through sustainable viticulture practices. Click this link to LiveInc.org to learn more.

Essential Skill #26: Adopt a Glacier

"Glaciers are canaries in the global warming coal mine, sensitive measures of what's happening to our atmosphere," writes author David de Rothschild in The Live Earth Global Warming Survival Handbook. "And glaciers are fracturing, liquifying, and flowing into the oceans at alarming rates."

So why is that a problem?

Two big reasons:

1) There's more fresh water in glaciers than anywhere else in the world -- water that millions of people depend on every year. If glaciers were to disappear, so would a valuable resource that would be impossible for us to replace.

2) As glaciers melt, sea levels rise. For example, take Greenland's ice sheet and glaciers. If all of them were to melt, the sea would rise by 23 feet. Imagine what that melting alone would do to coastlines all over the world.

With a shrinking water supply and eroding coastlines, the disappearance of glaciers would result in millions of environmental refugees all over the world, forced to move closer to other fresh water supplies or inland away from the home that is now underwater. That means more people dependent on less land and water.

So the preservation of glaciers should be inspiration enough for us to eliminate the emission of global warming-causing greenhouse gases into the air. De Rothschild suggests inspiring yourself daily with Essential Skill #26 in The Live Earth Global Warming Survival Handbook:

Adopt a glacier.

"A good place to start looking for your new, icy friend is the National Snow and Ice Data Center's photo collection.... Cherish your adopted ice floe by posting its picture in a prominent place and by checking on it each year. Monitoring your adoptee will be a gradual process."

It's no formal adoption program -- just a way for us to put a name to the face of a glacier that our eco-friendly ways can help save.

Essential Skill #25: Green Your Cube

It may not sign your paychecks, but the Earth will pay you back plenty if you treat every day as though it's take-your-green-to-work day. It's Essential Skill #25 in The Live Earth Global Warming Survival Handbook:

Green your cube.

Whether you spend 40 hours a week in one of countless cubicles in a huge corporate office, or you run your own small business with just a handful of employees, how you work for a living directly impacts how the planet will ultimately work for you.

"If one million people shut down their office PCs overnight," writes author David de Rothschild, "we would eliminate up to 45,000 tons of CO2 per year." And that's just one of many cube-greening tips.

In addition to shutting off your computer at the end of the day:

• Save important emails and PDFs in your online folders instead of printing them out
• Recycle all paper instead of throwing it in the trash
• Meet with your long-distance colleagues over a webcam instead of via a plane
• Ride a bicycle to work instead of driving your car
• If you work too far from your home to ride a bike every day, join a carpool or take public transportation
• Fill your office with plants that help take toxins out of the air (de Rothschild suggests spider plants and peace lilies to help remove carbon monoxide, and ficus and aloe vera to help remove the formaldehyde in adhesives and furniture)
• Stop using staples, which cannot be reused like paper clips
• On mild weather days, open the windows instead of running the heat or air conditioning
• Bring your own dishes and utensils to work instead of using the styrofoam, paper or plastic offerings in your break room or cafeteria
• Turn off lights when not in use -- in your cubicle, in the break room and in the bathroom (circulate a memo asking everyone to do the same, and post copies where appropriate)

Try these tips, and get creative with your own, and your eco-friendly work could become the most rewarding job you've ever known.

Essential Skill #24: Convince a Skeptic

If you've ever gotten into a debate with family or friends over the legitimacy of global warming, and found yourself grasping at straws to make the best argument possible, Essential Skill #24 in The Live Earth Global Warming Survival Handbook is for you:

Convince a skeptic.

Author David de Rothschild offers this mock-conversation in hopes of helping you respond to skeptics who question the existence, proof, danger and cause of global warming, as well the impact of greener practices on our economy.

Skeptic: "Global warming?! Scientists can't even agree on whether warming exists, or how it might work if it does."

Response: "Virtually every credible scientific organization and study has concluced that the Earth is heating up, and that higher CO2 levels affect global temperatures."

Skeptic: "All this so-called 'proof' comes from computer programs and hypothetical projections. There's no real-world evidence of current climate change."

Response: "Climate scientists have been keeping accurate records of surface temperature for the past 50 years, and those records definitively show that the Earth is getting hotter -- a conclusion that's supported by data gathered from ice cores, satellites, and weather balloons."

Skeptic: "Then how come the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets are getting bigger? If global warming were real, they'd both be shrinking."

Response: Actually, overall, both are shrinking. Greenland's ice sheet loses 48 cubic miles of ice per year. The amount of ice in certain areas may be increasing, but that's because global warming leads to global moistening, and the extra precipitation feezes and becomes ice where it falls. The bigger point: global warming is a shift in climate patterns over a span of several decades, not day-to-day change."

Skeptic: "Fine, but if global warming leads to milder winters, better farming, and longer summer vacations, why fight it? It sounds pretty good."

Response: "Rising sea levels, stronger hurricanes, and more frequent droughts don't sound good to me. The real concern is how quickly we're making the climate change. Rapid shifts don't give species (including Homo sapiens) time to adjust, and we're not only heating up the Earth to the highest temperatures in human history -- we're doing it faster than ever before."

Skeptic: "But carbon dioxide is a naturally occurring gas. Humans might have nothing to do with the increase."

Response: "I've heard that claim too. It was in an oil industry-funded ad that proclaimed, 'Carbon dioxide: They call it pollution, we call it life.' Each year, the burning of fossil fuels results in more than 24 billion tons of CO2 emissions worldwide. CO2 levels are higher today than they've been at any point in the last 650,000 years."

Skeptic: "Even if global warming is real, we can't stop it without ruining our economy and cutting millions of jobs."

Response: "Recycling is already a $50-billion-a-year industry, and within 10 years solar power is slated to generate $69 billion a year. There are plenty of opportunities for making money while reducing CO2. The Industrial Revolution got us here; there's no reason that a Green Revolution can't get us out."

If you want to know more, check out Grist's comprehensive "How to Talk to a Climate Skeptic."