首页
外语
计算机
考研
公务员
职业资格
财经
工程
司法
医学
专升本
自考
实用职业技能
登录
外语
After vaccines and bed nets, could the humble cooking stove be the next big idea to save millions of lives in poor countries? Hi
After vaccines and bed nets, could the humble cooking stove be the next big idea to save millions of lives in poor countries? Hi
admin
2015-06-14
62
问题
After vaccines and bed nets, could the humble cooking stove be the next big idea to save millions of lives in poor countries? Hillary Clinton, America’s secretary of state, hopes so. She was marking the launch on September 21st of a new alliance that aims to raise $250m to supply clean stoves to 100m poor households by 2020. It is headed by the United Nations Foundation, a charity. Among its backers are governments(chiefly America, which has put up an initial $50m), charities(the Shell Foundation)and private firms(Morgan Stanley, an investment bank).
Around two billion people have no access to modern energy, and a billion have it only sporadically. The smoky stoves that many of them use, the World Health Organisation reckons, produce particulate pollution that causes around 2m premature deaths a year. Makeshift cookers also catch fire easily, maiming and killing. And lives are not the only things wasted. Women and girls in rural villages lose time and energy walking around collecting dirty solid fuels, ranging from crop waste to cow dung(better used as fertiliser).
The appeal of a stove that produces more heat, more cleanly and with less fuel is clear. But Kirk Smith, a stove specialist at the University of California at Berkeley, points out that most efforts to promote cleaner stoves have flopped. Too much emphasis has gone on technology and talking to people at the top, too little to consulting the women who actually do the cooking. When subsidies run out, the schemes have faltered, with stoves left unused or broken.
Why might it be different this time? Wouter Deelder of Dalberg, a development consultancy, says that stoves have improved in everything from the materials used to the design of chimneys. Even so, the new stoves can cost $30 or more. Greater efficiency means they pay for themselves in a few months, but the price is still prohibitive for people living on a few dollars a week. Moreover, technology that works well in the laboratory may fail in the field, where fuels, cooking practices and even the shapes of vessels vary widely.
Last month the Indian government and the X Prize Foundation, a charity that organises incentive prizes, launched a global competition to develop a cheap, clean-burning stove. Gauri Singh of the Indian renewable energy ministry says she wants a stove with a "high-tech heart" that can be tweaked for local conditions.
Another lesson of past failures, says Daniel Kammen, who runs the World Bank’s clean-energy programmes, is the need for better data about how stoves are actually used. That is increasingly possible, because cheap sensors can be embedded in stoves. At Berkeley, Mr. Smith’s team is working with Vodafone, a mobile-phone company, on a wireless gadget that allows researchers on motorcycles to download the data from stoves. Some in the alliance also hope to tap the money available to curb greenhouse-gas emissions.
But the best reason for hope may lie in the new-found awareness of market forces among governments and the UN crowd. Pressed on this point, Mrs. Clinton says emphatically that the new stoves "must not be given away". As with anti malarial bed nets, she argues, charging a little makes people value and use them properly.
That will come as good news to the small army of entrepreneurs in the developing world now coming up with novel business models to sell and service the cooking stoves. One such innovator is Suraj Wahab of Toyola, a start-up selling some 60,000 stoves a year in Ghana by offering micro-credit. His advice to the new UN coalition is "please don’t offer handouts and don’t give away stoves. "
Suraj Wahab of Toyola is mentioned to prove that
选项
A、new stoves are selling good.
B、small companies are selling new stoves.
C、handouts should not be offered.
D、micro-credit will help selling the stoves.
答案
B
解析
转载请注明原文地址:https://kaotiyun.com/show/jjOO777K
0
专业英语八级
相关试题推荐
ThomasMalthuspublishedhisEssayonthePrincipleofPopulationalmost200yearsago.Eversincethen,forecastershavebeing
HowtoPresentaSeminarPaperToinvolvetheirstudentsmoreactivelyinthelearningprocess,manyuniversityteachersusua
Whichofthefollowingstatementsaboutthecommandchangeoftroopsistrue?
TheAmericanWay:FreedomTheheartoftheAmericancalendarisJuly4.Americanshavecelebratedthisdateas"Independence
A、hethoughtMr.SunhaswrittentheletterwellB、thereissomethingwrongaboutthegrammerC、theycanbeimprovedaccordingt
TheParisConferenceonJanuary18th,1919whichwasactuallyaconferenceofdivisionofcoloniesofthedefeatedcountrieswas
Systematiceffortsatnationalnutritionplanningindevelopingcountriesgobackbarelyadecade.Duringthatbrieftimethere
The______ofLondonisfamousascentersfordramaandmusicandisalsoacommercialcenter.
A、Roads.B、Streets.C、Lanes.D、Highways.D这个题可以用排除法。Roads,streets,lanesarenotheavysurfaces.只有turnpikesareextensivesurfac
TheNewYorkpolicedepartmentsaystherehasbeenno【N1】______againstthecity’ssubwaysystem,butadditionalsecurityhasbe
随机试题
根据合伙企业法律制度的规定,下列选项中,属于普通合伙人当然退伙的情形足()。(2006年)
举办补偿贸易进口的料、件、设备与出口产品的核销及补税手续由
A.VSA、MAN B.POAH C.FDP D.AVP E.PGE发热时中枢的负调节介质是
系统性红斑狼疮的主要死因是
术后MODS中较容易和较早受到损害的器官是
下列对新中国成立以来农村实行土地所有制的时间排序正确的是()。 ①全国土地改革完成,土地归农民个人所有 ②人民公社化运动,强化了土地集体所有制 ③家庭联产承包责任制的实施,使土地在公有制基础上长期包给各户农家使用 ④农业合作化完成,土地归集
2014年,某地区生态移民人均可支配收入5084元,其中县内移民人均可支配收入4933元,县外移民人均可支配收入5253元。2014年该地区生态移民人均可支配收入比农村居民人均可支配收入低3326元,比该地区山区九县农村居民人均可支配收入低1099元。
题设所给变上限定积分中含有参数x,因此令u=2x-t,则du=-dt,[*]
WhatisJane’sstudystrategyinlectures?
Attemptstopersuadehertostayaftershefeltinsultedwere______.
最新回复
(
0
)