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Stovers,<br>
<br>
Please read the message below from Kirk Smith, and the recent
article from The Economist. <br>
<br>
I add: Both Smith and the Economist totally ignore the proven
capabilities of the TLUD stoves, which are gas-burning stoves that
make their own gas from the dry biomass fuels that both Smith and
the Economist recognise as being abundant, locally available, and
affordable (using about half of the same fuel that the families are
currently using.).<br>
<br>
And the West Bengal Champion TLUD stove projects, now with 38,000
stoves in daily use, are financially beneficial to the low-income
households, earning money with the sale of the charcoal by-product
and the sale of verified carbon offsets. TLUD stoves would be a
major "social inversment" and not a "subsidy". <br>
<br>
Paul<br>
<div class="moz-forward-container">
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
Doc / Dr TLUD / Prof. Paul S. Anderson, PhD
Email: <a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:psanders@ilstu.edu">psanders@ilstu.edu</a>
Skype: paultlud Phone: +1-309-452-7072
Website: <a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="http://www.drtlud.com">www.drtlud.com</a></pre>
<br>
<br>
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<td>[stove and climate] The Economist weighs in</td>
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<th nowrap="nowrap" valign="BASELINE" align="RIGHT">Date: </th>
<td>Sun, 8 Apr 2018 17:50:02 -0700</td>
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<tr>
<th nowrap="nowrap" valign="BASELINE" align="RIGHT">From: </th>
<td>Kirk Smith<br>
</td>
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<th nowrap="nowrap" valign="BASELINE" align="RIGHT">To: </th>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="background:white"><span
style="font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif">Mostly
about Africa, but does, somewhat reluctantly, admit that
India is making serious progress. Important
corrections/additions to the India portion are that the
(now) 36 million new connections under the national program
since 2015 count only those newly provided to
below-poverty-line households and are on track to achieve
80+ million by 2020. This is coming up to half a billion
poor people, if achieved. This is on top of “normal” growth
in the middle class, which will probably equal some 30
million households in his period.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background:white"><span
style="font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background:white"><span
style="font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif">The
<i>Economist</i> of course does not like subsidies, as is
clear in the article, but this article fails to fully
acknowledge India’s work to transform “subsidy” to “social
investment” in this sector, through much more efficient
targeting. In addition, through its first initiative as
part of the new set of national LPG programs, the Give It Up
campaign, the net impact on government expenditure overall
will be essentially zero compared to maintaining subsidies
as they were. A brilliant and somewhat magical
transformation of an awkward embarrassing drag on the
economy (subsidies) to direct social investment for the
poor.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background:white"><span
style="font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background:white"><span
style="font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif">Much
more to be said and by no means without problems, but too
bad the Indian program did not receive more coverage here.
Good to see this article, but from the <i>Economist </i>standpoint,
one might think a transformed vision of “subsidies” via
modern IT is the bigger story/k</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background:white"><span
style="font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background:white"><span
style="font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background:white"><i><span
style="font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif">Economist</span></i><span
style="font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif">,
April 5, 2018</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background:white"><span
style="font-size:18.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif;color:#e3120b">How
the other half cooks</span><span
style="font-size:21.5pt;font-family:"Times New
Roman",serif;color:#121212;letter-spacing:-.25pt">:
Household smoke may be the world’s deadliest environmental
hazard</span><b><span
style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif;color:black"></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"
style="margin-bottom:12.0pt;background:white"><i><span
style="font-size:15.0pt;font-family:"Times New
Roman",serif;color:#121212">Global campaigns have
failed to change how poor people heat their food</span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background:white"><span
style="font-size:15.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif;color:black"><img
id="Picture_x0020_1"
src="cid:part1.724A2ABE.6900F704@ilstu.edu"
alt="https://cdn.static-economist.com/sites/default/files/images/print-edition/20180407_FNP003_0.jpg"
class="" height="1080" width="1920"></span><span
style="font-size:15.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif;color:black"></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background:white"><span
style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif;color:#121212"><a
href="https://www.economist.com/sections/international"
moz-do-not-send="true"><span
style="color:#3e51b5;text-decoration:none"> Print
edition | International</span></a></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background:white"><span
style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif;color:#121212"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background:white"><span
style="font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif;color:#7a7a7a;letter-spacing:.2pt">
SOKONE, SENEGAL</span><span
style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif;color:#121212">:
</span><span style="font-size:15.0pt;font-family:"Times
New Roman",serif;color:#121212">IMAGINE building a
small pile of wood and kindling in the smallest room in your
house, and setting fire to it. You can keep the door open,
to let out some smoke, but cannot switch on an extractor
fan. You must tend the fire for an hour. Repeat the process
three times a day.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background:white"><span
style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif;color:#121212"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background:white"><span
style="font-size:15.0pt;font-family:"Times New
Roman",serif;color:#121212">This is how Fatou N’Dour
lives. Her kitchen, separate from her home and built of mud
bricks, measures roughly two metres by two. She usually
cooks indoors because of the winds that whip across
Lambayene, the village where she lives in central Senegal.
Asked about ventilation, she points to a hole in one wall,
which is about ten centimetres square. Other women in the
village cook rice, couscous and meaty sauces in similar
conditions, using wood from a nearby forest.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background:white"><span
style="font-size:15.0pt;font-family:"Times New
Roman",serif;color:#121212">Wood and charcoal in
Africa; coal in East Asia; wood and animal dung in South
Asia—in much of the world, food is heated by burning
primitive solid fuels. Each fire is tiny, but the
International Energy Agency (IEA), a Paris-based research
group, estimates that 5% of the world’s primary energy
demand in 2016 was supplied by “traditional solid biomass”.
Wind turbines and solar panels combined generated less than
half as much energy.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background:white"><span
style="font-size:15.0pt;font-family:"Times New
Roman",serif;color:#121212">The awful effects of these
fires begin with their impact on human health. Household
smoke is thought to be the world’s most lethal environmental
problem, killing 2.6m people a year. Where wood and charcoal
are burned, trees often disappear. Africa loses some 0.5% of
its forests every year, a higher rate of destruction than
South America’s. Soot from domestic fires also warms the
planet, particularly when it settles on snow. Black carbon
like that from dirty cookstoves is thought to be the third
most important cause of climate change after carbon dioxide
and methane.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background:white"><span
style="font-size:15.0pt;font-family:"Times New
Roman",serif;color:#121212">Governments, aid agencies
and charities have for decades tried to coax people towards
cleaner fuels like liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) and
electricity. Those who must burn wood and dung are prodded
to do so in more efficient stoves.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background:white"><span
style="font-size:15.0pt;font-family:"Times New
Roman",serif;color:#121212">Progress has been
astoundingly slow. Since 2000 the number of people living in
extreme poverty has plunged from 1.7bn to about 600m.
Neonatal deaths have fallen by 49%. Yet the number of people
heating their food with dirty fuels has stuck at
2.5bn-2.8bn, according to the IEA, largely because of growth
in Africa (see chart). The Global Alliance for Clean
Cooking, which uses a slightly different measure, estimated
in 2015 that the number might even have risen. As for those
improved cookstoves, researchers who hand them out in a
village almost invariably find, when they return several
years later, that people have gone back to cooking over
handmade mud stoves or large stones.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background:white"><span
style="font-size:15.0pt;font-family:"Times New
Roman",serif;color:#121212"><img id="Picture_x0020_2"
src="cid:part3.AD437F9B.B704687F@ilstu.edu"
alt="https://cdn.static-economist.com/sites/default/files/images/print-edition/20180407_IRC157.png"
class="" height="993" width="912" border="0"></span><span
style="font-size:15.0pt;font-family:"Times New
Roman",serif;color:#121212"></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background:white"><span
style="font-size:15.0pt;font-family:"Times New
Roman",serif;color:#121212">That efforts to change how
people cook have fallen so short for so long can be blamed
on weak markets, unco-ordinated charity interventions and
muddled priorities. It also illuminates why development is
so much harder in Africa than in Asia.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background:white"><span
style="font-size:15.0pt;font-family:"Times New
Roman",serif;color:#121212">Cooking over an open fire
is no fun, especially if you have to do it every day. In
another village in western Senegal, Felane, women complain
that their kitchens are always hot and smoky. The smoke
stings and irritates—one woman blames it for colouring the
whites of her eyes. Firewood is becoming ever harder to
find. A local man, Cheikh Diouf, who has nine children, says
that wood-collecting may take four trips a week, each one of
up to four hours.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background:white"><span
style="font-size:15.0pt;font-family:"Times New
Roman",serif;color:#121212">Those who have a simple
metal cookstove with a clay liner, known as a <i>jambaar</i>,
say it is better than the traditional method of balancing a
pot over three big stones atop a fire. The<i> jambaar</i> is
more efficient, needing less wood. Surveys in other
countries show that many poor women realise this. A <i>jambaar</i> can
also be moved outside when the weather allows. And it just
feels superior: one woman in Lambayene describes it as
“civilised”.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background:white"><span
style="font-size:15.0pt;font-family:"Times New
Roman",serif;color:#121212">Yet <i>jambaar</i> stoves
are seldom on sale at the weekly markets. People seem not
even to know how much they cost. Gunther Bensch and Jörg
Peters, both of the Leibniz Institute for Economic Research
in Germany, gave <i>jambaar</i> stoves to Senegalese
villagers in 2009. When they checked, in 2015, almost all
had worn out. Hardly any had been replaced.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background:white"><span
style="font-size:15.0pt;font-family:"Times New
Roman",serif;color:#121212">The problem is not only
poverty. Mr Bensch and Mr Peters have tried auctioning <i>jambaar</i> stoves.
They found that villagers often bid more than they would pay
in nearby towns. Perhaps they do not buy them in markets
because shopping is seen as women’s work, and women are not
allowed to spend much without consulting their husbands. Or
perhaps it is too difficult to carry stoves from town to
village. One urban stove vendor, Malick Niang, says he would
not try to sell the stoves in villages. They are heavy and
breakable, and demand there is uncertain. Another problem is
that, being safe, poor and French-speaking, Senegal attracts
charities and aid agencies. Some at times hand out stoves
for little or nothing. That confuses people about their true
value, and can wreck markets.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background:white"><span
style="font-size:15.0pt;font-family:"Times New
Roman",serif;color:#121212">Even better cookstoves may
not do much to improve health. The linkage between household
smoke and harm seems not to be linear, says Kevin Mortimer
of the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine. Above a
certain level, breathing more smoke might not make a person
much sicker. Even the most efficient wood stoves expose
cooks to many times the level of smoke that the World Health
Organisation regards as safe. Mr Mortimer was involved in a
large trial in Malawi, using a top-of-the-line stove, which
found no evidence of an effect on rates of childhood
pneumonia.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background:white"><span
style="font-size:15.0pt;font-family:"Times New
Roman",serif;color:#121212">Perhaps it is better to
pick a genuinely clean fuel (clean to cook with, not
necessarily in the planet-preserving sense) and promote it
hard. Brazil, Ecuador and Indonesia, among others, have all
subsidised LPG. Since 2016 the Indian government has made
LPG available to 34m households, giving them gas stoves and
one cylinder free. The petroleum ministry says that
four-fifths of the newly connected households have bought a
replacement cylinder. On average, they buy four cylinders a
year, which implies they get at least half of their cooking
energy from wood, dung and the like. Still, this is rapid
progress.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background:white"><span
style="font-size:15.0pt;font-family:"Times New
Roman",serif;color:#121212">So switching fuels rather
than stoves seems the more hopeful approach. “We were
fooling ourselves, thinking that we could pick any old fuel
off the ground and make it burn cleanly,” says Kirk Smith,
an environmental scientist at the University of California,
Berkeley, who is involved with India’s programme. Not only
is LPG much cleaner than solid fuel. It also feels like a
step up in the world and is easier to use (even men can cook
with it).</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background:white"><span
style="font-size:15.0pt;font-family:"Times New
Roman",serif;color:#121212">Subsidies make for poor
policy tools. They are snaffled by wealthy, well-connected
people. They create lobbies supporting them, and become hard
to cut. Particularly in small countries, subsidised goods
are likely to leak over borders. Subsidies may also vary
from year to year with the government’s budget. That is a
particular danger in the case of cooking fuel, because cooks
prize reliability. If people cannot always obtain clean
fuel, they will probably revert to dirty stuff, says Radha
Muthiah, the departing head of the Global Alliance for Clean
Cookstoves.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background:white"><span
style="font-size:15.0pt;font-family:"Times New
Roman",serif;color:#121212">These are mighty problems
even for large middle-income countries with more-or-less
competent governments. India, which for years frittered away
money on LPG for the middle class, has managed to steer the
subsidies—the world’s biggest cash-transfer programme—more
accurately towards the poor, partly thanks to the Aadhaar
biometric-identity scheme. But in smaller, poorer, more
corrupt countries, LPG subsidies are probably out of the
question. India has found a tricky, costly way of clearing
the air. In sub-Saharan Africa, the smoke lingers.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background:white"><i><span
style="font-size:15.0pt;font-family:"Times New
Roman",serif;color:#121212">This article appeared in
the International section of the print edition under the
headline "How the other half cooks"</span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<div style="border:none;border-bottom:solid windowtext
1.0pt;padding:0in 0in 1.0pt 0in">
<p class="MsoNormal" style="border:none;padding:0in"> </p>
</div>
<p class="MsoNormal">Kirk R. Smith, MPH, PhD <<a
href="mailto:krksmith@berkeley.edu" moz-do-not-send="true">krksmith@berkeley.edu</a>></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Professor of Global Environmental Health</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Director, Collaborative Clean Air Policy
Centre, Delhi</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">747 University Hall, School of Public
Health</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">University of California Berkeley,
94720-7360 USA</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">510-643-0793; fax 642-5815</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><a href="http://www.kirkrsmith.org/"
moz-do-not-send="true">http://www.kirkrsmith.org/</a></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
</div>
-- <br>
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