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.