Could changing the way you cook help fight global warming? If you've considered this question and you live in a rich country, you've probably been thinking about whether to ditch your gas stove for an electric or induction cooktop. But for nearly a third of the world's population, even that gas stove would be a big step up from the preindustrial cooking methods still in wide use across Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Some 2.3 billion people regularly cook their meals over open fires or on makeshift stoves using fuels like wood, animal dung, charcoal, and coal — methods that generate deadly local air pollution and are far more carbon-intensive than the electric and gas stoves enjoyed by the relatively wealthy of the world.

The lack of access to these "clean cooking" technologies is responsible for 3.7 million premature deaths annually, due to the harms of breathing smoke from cooking fires (which often accumulates indoors), according to a report from the International Energy Agency, or IEA. Fortunately, the total number of people without access to clean cooking is falling, largely due to progress in Asia and Latin America. But in Africa, that number is trending in the opposite direction, as campaigns for clean cooking have not been able to keep up with massive population growth in sub-Saharan Africa. In an effort to address this, representatives of 55 nations convened in Paris last week for the Summit on Clean Cooking in Africa, organized by the IEA. The marquee announcement of the conference was a $2.2 billion pledge by governments........

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