Abundance: The Future is Better Than You Think

by Peter H. Diamandis

the two-burner electric cookstove is a simple device, but it would bring magnificent change to the 3.5 billion people who now cook food and get light and heat by burning biomass: wood, dung, and crop residue. According to a 2002 WHO report, 36 percent of acute upper respiratory infections, 22 percent of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and 1.5 percent of all cancers are all caused by indoor air pollution resulting from this practice. Thus an electric cookstove relieves 4 percent of the global disease burden. Ever better—and just like water—the electric cookstove is another example of an interconnected solution. A 2007 UN report found that 90 percent of all wood removals in Africa are used for energy. Thus providing the power to run a cookstove will also help preserve endangered forests and the entire litany of ecosystem services those forests provide. Ecosystem services are things like crop pollination, carbon sequestration, climate regulation, water purification, air purification, nutrient dispersal, nutrient recycling, waste processing, flood control, pest control, disease control, and so forth, that the environment provides for us free of charge. This is a big deal for two reasons. The first is that the value of the ecosystems services our environment now provides (for free) has been calculated at $36 trillion a year—a figure roughly equal to the entire annual global economy. The second reason is that—as the $200 million experiment that was Biosphere 2 so clearly ...