[Stoves] Climate change

[Jonathan P Gill]

Sir,

I understand that, back in the day,  the original goals of this list were pretty much as you suggest - as recently confirmed by AJ himself.

What I am suggesting is that while the original goals are necessary, they are no longer sufficient for optimum results across various important domains.

To this end, I suggest we consider reviewing the goals and evolve them as may be useful to achieving the best results for as as many concerns as is reasonable.  I tend to share Paul Olivier's view that if a stove is not good enough for "top of the pyramid" use, why should we expect anyone at BOP, Bottom of the Pyramid, to aspire to it?  As the saying goes, what is good for the goose had better be good for the gander too.   Aspiration is a very powerful driver for change.  I suspect that, if we can leverage aspirations, we will greatly increase the diffusion and use of newer stove technologies.

As for the term "climate security", perhaps it is not useful where you are. In the US, however, it resonates with many other security issues, such as Homeland Security, Food Security and so forth.  It serves the purpose of reframing the conversation away from some of the confusion and conflict introduced by other framings.  Of course you are free to disagree and to use terms you find more appropriate.

As for stoves and climate security, a single stove does little.  If, however, we can get sufficient diffusion and adoption, then the the contributions of many thousands of distributed carbon negative stoves could make noticeable contributions in a number of areas, not limited to "health and minimal outlay on fuel gathering".  We can do better.  And I agree, stoves alone will not resolve the challenges to climate security we are facing.  Stoves are not a silver bullet.  With luck, stoves might be a piece of silver buckshot.    To the extent that our work also helps to promote the transition from combustion to pyrolysis on a broader range of applications, to that extent we also contribute something to Climate Security as well.

Best wishes for your endeavors,

Jock




On Aug 24, 2013, at 4:42 PM, Philip Lloyd <plloyd at mweb.co.za> wrote:

> Jonathan said " I respectfully disagree. How we design and build our stoves
> has everything to do with climate security"
> That's strange - I thought we were trying to find ways to help poor people
> cook with minimal risk to their health and minimal outlay on fuel gathering.
> When SE Asia's emissions are growing by 700Mt CO2 every year, there ain't
> much we poor stovers can do about "climate security" - and what a weasel
> phrase that is!
> 
> Prof Philip Lloyd
> Energy Institute
> Cape Peninsula University of Technology
> PO Box 652, Cape Town 8000
> Tel:021 460 4216
> Fax:021 460 3828
> Cell: 083 441 5247
> 

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