VELSHI: All right. This is a fascinating story I have been looking forward to. An African forest vanishing in the blink of an eye all because the people of Congo need the wood to cook their food. But now one simple thing is transforming the way they prepare meals. And it's saving the forest in the process. Here's Anderson Cooper.</s>ANDERSON COOPER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: The Democratic Republic of Congo is home to the second largest forest in the world; 215 million acres, a land mass more than a thousand times the size of New York City, but it's being lost at a breathtaking pace. Mostly, so the Congolese people can simply survive. They need the wood the forest provides to cook their food taking nearly 1,000 tons of wood every day. But international aid organization Mercy Corps has stepped in with a simple idea. Help the Congolese rethink the way they cook by teaching them how to make fuel efficient stoves. They're made out of mud, clay and straw. It takes an hour to transform the dirt into a cooking machine with help from a piece of metal in the middle. The stoves use 70 percent less wood than traditional methods and so far more than 30,000 stoves have been made, protecting habitat and improving the health and safety of the cooks. There's less smoke with the new stoves and women no longer have to search for firewood in the forest still populated with rebel groups; one simple thing helping to provide for a unique culture and preserve the forest.</s>VELSHI: And remember, you can catch Anderson Cooper every night on "AC 360." It starts at 10:00 p.m. Eastern Time.
Congo: Saving the Forest, Saving Energy