Essential Skill #50: Bamboo Your Life

"Bamboo and trees both sequester CO2 in their roots and branches as they grow," writes author David de Rothschild in The Live Earth Global Warming Survival Handbook. "But bamboo stores more CO2 and generates 35 percent more oxygen than an equivalent stand of trees."

Thus Essential Skill #50 in The Handbook:

Bamboo your life!

From bamboo furniture, to bamboo flooring, to bamboo utensils, to fabrics for bamboo linens and bamboo clothes, this wood alternative is versatile too. And instead of the years it takes to grow a tree, bamboo is a grass that grows in just a matter of days -- as much as 2 to 3 feet in just 24 hours! So while chopping down trees means deforestation, chopping down bamboo means clearing the way for another harvest.

Benefits of bamboo include:

• Sequestering CO2
• Reducing rainforest deforestation
• No fertilizer or pesticides necessary
• Stabilization of the soil

"If we planted one million acres of bamboo, we would eliminate up to 4.8 million tons of CO2 per year," writes de Rothschild in The Handbook. If you want to help, cut down on your wood consumption and buy bamboo when you can.