‘Firewood cooking and life expectancy’ – a reply

G A. D. SIRIMAL

Reading the above captioned letter by Rear Admiral [Dr] Sarath Weerasekera you published last week, prompted me to browse the internet to find out the effects of burning firewood as against Coal, and I came across what had been published in The Daily Mail, London, where it says – “It is ‘lunacy’ to run Drax power station biomass instead of Coal, converting the plant to burn wood destroys forests and emits more carbon, – Living humming forest – destroying symbol of the shameful absurdity of European Energy Policy’.

There have been numerous letters and news items, for and against, on this subject but the international environment authorities vehemently oppose burning of coal. As we all know, trees convert Carbon Dioxide to Oxygen by a process called Photosynthesis, hence exploiting forest cover due to population explosion has received the attention of World Health Organization , but due to religious beliefs and minority races trying equate with major races, do not answer the call for family planning. The most vociferous is the Catholic Church, It would be interesting know what Dan Brown wrote in his book INFERNO, where he says that World Health Organization [WHO] takes over population very seriously and spending millions of dollars sending doctors into Africa to deliver free condoms and educate people about birth control, but the Catholic Church sends armies of missionaries to thwart the effort of WHO., by saying those who use condoms would GO TO HELL, and the effort is a stalemate. If the population is brought down to a manageable state and the forest cover increases, this question could be satisfactorily solved to a certain degree.

Now comes the life expectancy which some fanatics say is lessened by use of firewood for cooking and globally accepted. Rear Admiral [Dr] Sarath Weerasekera has debunked this belief by mentioning how long his mother and grandmother lived, to over 90 years. I too join him to say my mother and grandmother lived for over 90 years. I could still picture my grandmother blowing through a Galvanized Iron pipe to keep the flames in the hearth, tears flowing down her cheeks due to smoke. Buddhists believe the life expectancy is due to merit accrued during our sojourn in Samsara, and as far as believers in other religions, I believe it is the will and wish of God.To sum up, let us strive to bring down the population by legally restricting families to have one or two, as was done by China some years back.