Why is Practical Action supporting the use of fossil fuels?
Practical Action recognises that there may be environmental concerns about swapping to cleaner fuels such as liquid petroleum gas, as it is a fossil fuel and therefore emits greenhouse gases. However liquid petroleum gas will generally produce less greenhouse gases than wood being burnt very inefficiently on a three stone fire. However the environmental impact must be balanced with the health impact. These fuels could offer an immediate answer to indoor air pollution and save the lives of millions of people. The issue of global warming is more to do with the over consumption of the West. Even if fossil fuel was available to an extra two billion people in the developing world the increase in greenhouse gas emissions could be easily be offset by increasing the efficiency of the world car fleet by not much more than one mile per gallon.
