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
23
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. "
According to this passage,
选项
A、new stoves will be given away as charity on September 21.
B、this time, new stoves plan proves to be successful.
C、new stoves plan is supported by government and organizations.
D、the advantages of new stoves have not been clear.
答案
C
解析
转载请注明原文地址:https://kaotiyun.com/show/kjOO777K
0
专业英语八级
相关试题推荐
A、Markreceivedresponsesfrom53schools.B、Therewereabout1,500bagsdecoratedwithoneannouncement.C、Itwasahugesucces
TheAmericanWay:FreedomTheheartoftheAmericancalendarisJuly4.Americanshavecelebratedthisdateas"Independence
_____isthesecondlargestcountryintheworld.
RobertLouisStevensonisarepresentativeof_____inEnglishliterature.
FairFaresRailways:CheaperTicketsWillNotSolveRail’sProblemsMostofthetime,parliamentarycommitteereportsembody
Systematiceffortsatnationalnutritionplanningindevelopingcountriesgobackbarelyadecade.Duringthatbrieftimethere
TheNewYorkpolicedepartmentsaystherehasbeenno【N1】______againstthecity’ssubwaysystem,butadditionalsecurityhasbe
Iwasonly8yearsoldonJuly20,1969,whenNeilArmstrong,38-year-oldcommanderofApollo11,descendedthecrampedlunarmo
说是烘蛋糕,其实,烘焙的是心情。有时,心情发霉,百事无心。坐立难安之际,索性撇下多如蝼蚁的琐事,一头钻进厨房.专心致志地烘蛋糕。烘出一个好蛋糕,绝对不是一加’一等于二那般的直截了当。把各种配料准确无误地称好备妥,像攀爬高峰那般的小心,像校对文稿那
Iwasonly8yearsoldonJuly20,1969,whenNeilArmstrong,38-year-oldcommanderofApollo11,descendedthecrampedlunarmo
随机试题
A.虫媒病毒B.副黏病毒C.正黏病毒D.小核糖核酸病毒E.柯萨基病毒流行性腮腺炎
一健康小儿体重14kg,身长90cm,其年龄约为
在工程量清单的清单计价表格中,()的内容包括暂列金额。
当地基计算沉降过大或结构物对不均匀沉降敏感时,可采用()。
施工项目管理规划实施规划内容中技术组织措施计划应包括:保证质量和安全目标的措施、()。
下列案件中,属于税务行政处罚听证的范围是()。
甲、乙两车分处A、B两地,速度大小保持不变,相向而行时,2小时后相遇,同向而行时,30小时后,甲车追上乙车。问甲车将速度降低多少后,两车速度相等?
[2006年]在xOy坐标平面上,连续曲线l过点M(1,0),其上任意点P(x,y)(x≠0)处的切线斜率与直线OP的斜率之差等于ax(常数a>0).求l的方程;
检索每门课程的最高分,要求得到的信息包括课程名称、姓名和最高分,正确的命令是( )。为“课程”表中定义“开课系名”字段的默认值为“中文”,正确的命令是( )。
Readthearticlebelowaboutthecustomerretention.ChoosethebestwordtofilleachgapfromA,B,CorDontheoppositep
最新回复
(
0
)