Roberts, Clinton appreciate cleaner stoves used in India, China, Mexico

Actress Julia Roberts and US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have said that providing cleaner burning stoves to developing countries could save lives and help the climate.
Roberts, 43, and Clinton, 63, shared their views in a USA Today op-ed published May 6.
“The impact goes beyond people’s health,” the Politico quoted them as writing.
“Burning these fuels produces carbon dioxide, methane and black carbon, which contribute to climate change”.
“And cutting down trees for fuel causes natural habitats to dry up, forests to disappear and soil to erode,” they stated.
Millions of people die each year because of smoke from traditional cookstoves and open fires that rely on wood, dung or charcoal for fuel, according to the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves.
Those numbers are tilted steeply toward women and children in developing nations, who inhale the dangerously high concentration of chemicals and can develop diseases including lung cancer and cataracts.
“All of this presents a major challenge – but it can be solved,” Roberts and Clinton wrote.
“If we can get cleaner, more efficient cookstoves in wider use throughout the developing world, we can save lives, cut back on carbon emissions and create new economic opportunities for millions of women”.
“Fortunately, the technology for clean cookstoves already exists. Several companies are already producing them, and countries like India, China and Mexico have begun to introduce them in national programs”.
“But the uptake has been slow, because there hasn’t been a wide-scale effort to coordinate these efforts, or to make the stoves affordable in the developing world,” they added.