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.\nRoberts, 43, and Clinton, 63, shared their views in a USA Today op-ed published May 6.
\n\u201cThe impact goes beyond people\u2019s health,\u201d the Politico quoted them as writing.
\n\u201cBurning these fuels produces carbon dioxide, methane and black carbon, which contribute to climate change\u201d.
\n\u201cAnd cutting down trees for fuel causes natural habitats to dry up, forests to disappear and soil to erode,\u201d they stated.
\nMillions 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.
\nThose 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.
\n\u201cAll of this presents a major challenge – but it can be solved,\u201d Roberts and Clinton wrote.
\n\u201cIf 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\u201d.
\n\u201cFortunately, 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\u201d.
\n\u201cBut the uptake has been slow, because there hasn\u2019t been a wide-scale effort to coordinate these efforts, or to make the stoves affordable in the developing world,\u201d they added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"