Third world stoves contribute to global warming

On today's front page of the New York Times was an interesting article on how stoves used in the third world impact the climate. Environmentalists claim that although carbon dioxide is not the culprit here, the actual culprit,soot, can be equally devastating. In chemistry class, I learned that a complete combustion releases heat and has a byproduct of water. So where does soot come from and what can it do to our environment? The poor farmers of these third world villages use whatever they can gather to fuel a fire. In a country like India with a population of nearly one billion, little things can really add up. The soot eventually makes its way into the atmosphere and precipitates down onto glaciers. The soot attracts heat from the sun causing the glacier to melt.

Environmental experts in the United States and India seem to have been caught off guard with this one. In the U.S, laws were passed to regulate particulate emissions (like soot) in order to protect air quality and the health of the public. No one imagined that soot would contribute to global warming. What is more surprising than its global effects is where the soot is coming from. When you have a number of people greater than the population of the United States burning this stuff every day, it does not seem so far fetched anymore.

Clearly, global warming is a serious concern for all and now that we know such a thing, we can get to work on eliminating it. Would a realistic solution be going village to village handing out new stoves? Even if that was an option, who is going to write the check ? The matter will likely require international cooperation and contributions before this will ever go away.