Cut pollution and maybe, the planet will cool

Recent research suggests that if we can clean up diesel engines and inefficient cook stoves in India and China for example, that could delay the effects of greenhouse-gas buildup even if pollution from coal-fired power plants persists. The study concludes that if every country were to do what California has done in the last couple of decades to clean up diesel emissions, it would slow down global warming by 15 percent.

Aerosol pollutants such as sulfur dioxide, soot, and ozone are all bad for human health, but they have different effects on the climate. Some of the aerosols are warming the planet, and some are cooling the planet. For example, sulfates that form from coal-plant exhaust reflect sunlight back into space, acting to shade the planet and cool it off. Black-carbon particles from diesel exhaust, on the other hand, absorb sunlight and heat up, warming the atmosphere. Add them together, and on balance they could be cooling the planet! That is, they mask some of the temperature increase that would have occurred as a result of carbon dioxide emissions. But this effect would be more significant if the particulates that help heat up the atmosphere were removed.

What would happen if we immediately got rid of only the black-carbon aerosols? Doing that might lead to a cooling of the planet by half a degree to a degree Celsius. However the impact on temperature is hard to pin down. For one thing, pollution affects clouds and rainfall, which have complicated effects on climate. So it is not easy to assess.

2 million lives at stake due to inefficient stoves

What is the most primal need of energy for? Cooking. And when it comes to that, millions still do not have access to electricity. Nearly half the world's population uses biomass (wood, crop residues, charcoal or dung) or coal as fuel for cooking and heating.

Rural and poor across the world's developing nations still use smoke stoves that are bad for the environment and health. Indoor air pollution from such inefficient stoves affects about 3 billion people -- nearly half the world's population. In addition to respiratory disease caused by smoke, the fuel needed by inefficient stoves leads to deforestation, and environmental degradation. Women and children are at greatest risk for the adverse health effects posed by inefficient stoves.

An international effort to replace smoky, inefficient household stoves that people commonly use in lower and middle income countries with clean, affordable, fuel efficient stoves could save nearly 2 million lives each year, according to experts from the National Institutes of health.

The study authors cited a recent report by the World Bank, which noted that, in addition to improving public health, clean, efficient stoves could have benefits to the environment and the climate, by reducing carbon dioxide emissions.

In recognition of the problem, the United Nations launched the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves. A public-private partnership, the alliance seeks to create a global market for clean and efficient cookstoves and fuels in the developing world. To succeed, strategies for replacing the world's inefficient biomass stoves with clean, efficient stoves must be market driven, the researchers rightly noted. Equally important is the need for awareness among the people on the need for a clean stove, right?