Engineering, Poverty and The Circle of Empathy

The bottom billion of the world's population attempts to survive on $2 per day. Beyond this stark reality is an additional two billion people who either cook over an open fire or a poorly designed stove. About half of our global population cooks with gas, kerosene, or electricity, while the other half burns wood, coal, dung, or other solid fuels.

Clean air, according to the E.P.A. contains less than 15 micrograms of fine particles per cubic meter. Five times that amount will set off a smoke alarm. Three hundred times as much - roughly what an open fire produces - will slowly kill you. The World Health Organization has estimated that indoor smoke from improper cooking sources kills a million and a half people annually from the developing world. In addition, the average cooking fire produces about as much carbon dioxide as a car. Given that cooking fires each release one or two thousand grams of soot in a year and that three billion people rely on them, cleaning up those emissions may be the fastest, cheapest way to cool the planet.

Building a stove is simple. Building a good stove is hard. Building a good, cheap stove can be an engineer's nightmare. A "Good Stove" must have the following characteristics - (1) Reduces fuel use by more than 50%. (2) Reduces black carbon by more than 60%. (3) Reduces childhood pneumonia by more than 30%. (4) Affordable ($10) retail or less (5) Cooks love it. (6) Gets funded - in an environment where most appliance manufacturers see no profit in making products for people who can't pay for them. You also have multiple cultural issues - ranging from fire and smoke being seen as an effective defense against insects to the functional ability to cook a wide variety of foods (e.g., tortillas, chapatis, and heavy porridges).

Saving a million and a half people is one of those worthy endeavors where engineering can directly impact the interface points between poverty and human health in the developing world. Technologist and author Jaron Lanier has coined a wonderful term - "The Circle of Empathy." The various engineering professions and organizations need to draw an imaginary circle around their current empathy space. Call it sympathy or allegiance - the circled space fundamentally defines the working area between engineering and the individuals and groups that we care about and have compassion for. Unfortunately, a huge portion of the world's poorest people currently lie outside of our Circle of Empathy. It is important to understand and remember that many of the world's deepest controversies and conflicts involve issues and ideas on whether something or someone should lie just inside or outside a particular Circle of Empathy. One of the most pressing issues facing engineering is our ability to expand our Circle of Empathy to the bottom billions. Our ability to march forward as a civilization is a function of increasing the size of The Circles of Empathy. Engineering plays a key role in this circle expansion process.