Better Stoves Could Save Lives in India — and perhaps save the Planet

In this week’s international editions of Newsweek, I have a story about cook stoves. Hundred of millions of people in India cook their food – and heat their homes — using either open hearths or simple earthen stoves, often without a chimney, on which they burn wood or dung. The soot from such fires is extremely bad for people’s health. It is also very damaging to the environment: not only does gathering wood for cooking contribute to deforestation, it turns out that the black carbon produced from cook stoves contributes far more pound-for-pound to global warming than carbon dioxide does. But the good news is that black carbon also stays in the atmosphere for a much shorter period of time — just days or weeks instead of decades. So tackling black carbon emissions is one of the fastest ways to help mitigate climate change. It is also one of the cheapest — since better stoves are relatively inexpensive. The problem is that they are still not inexpensive enough to be attractive to the poorest of the poor. In addition, many of these people see little reason to change their traditional cooking methods. But now a host of factors are combining to produce what may be a serious breakthrough in the battle to get cleaner-burning, efficient cook stoves into the hands of those who need them. Check out my story. And for more information, you might also want to check out this relatively recent story in The New Yorker.

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