Kendra Okonski
Kendra Okonski wears various hats including from the London-based think tank, the International Policy Network (IPN).
History
She currently appears also as the Coordinator of the Sustainable Development Network.
Prior to 2001 Okonski worked as a research assistant at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, the Washington based think tank whose multi-million dollar budget comes from major US corporations like Philip Morris, Dow Chemical and ExxonMobil.
Daughter of a US lumber industrialist, Okonski grew up in Montana, U.S.A., and Santiago, Chile. She studied economics at Hillsdale College in Michigan, where she also edited, The Restoration, a libertarian publication for college students.
Okonski on climate change
Kendra Okonsiki said: -"Kyoto will do nothing to halt global warming."
This is true.
"It might delay it for a few years, but more stringent emissions cuts would."
This is true.
"But those things, that would actually harm us more than global warming would."
This is an unfounded inquantified assertion. There is no argument brought to bear to support it.
" . . . because it would constrain our ability to grow and to develop new technologies and to help poor countries do the same thing," she told ABC radio. [1]
"Attempting to mitigate our emissions of carbon dioxide, with the intention of changing the Earth's climate, is the wrong way to go about it. Whether or not humans are causing global warming, whether or not it's going to be negative, we ought to consider other strategies."
Why doesn't this read, "in addition to controlling emissions" . . . "we ought etc . . . ".
"If it's going to be negative, then we should address those problems, so you know, if disease is going to be a problem, we should address disease, not try to change the temperature to change the spread of disease. To me, it seems like rather ambitious and probably not possible," she said.
"If countries want to go on with the policies that they built around Kyoto, that's fine."
That is a better formulation and corrects the earlier assertion against action on emissions mitigation . . .
"but if they want something that globally is going to work, then we need to think about other measures that we can take and that I believe those things should include adaptations."
That too is a better formulation and corrects the earlier assertion against action on emissions mitigation . . .
"Adaptation would increase our resilience and reduce our vulnerability to any changes that come along, that kind of strategy would be beneficial regardless of whatever climate changes happen, and we wouldn't be sort of spending a lot of money now, as Kyoto would make us do, to have negligible benefits in the future," she said.
Okonski has spoken in the past to university student groups, and has links with the libertarian London School of Economics Hayek Society.
Okonski published an article on the Economist-owned publication European Voice on 13 February 2004, as book author but without disclosing her IPN affiliation. In it she wrote that the European Union should focus less on climate change and that climate change may become "a delight for birdwatchers and gardeners".
Bangladesh is already partly drowing from sea-level rise and this is not "a delight for birdwatchers and gardeners".
In March 2006 she spoke as Director of Environmental Programs for IPN at an Amercian Enterprise Institute Symposium on "Water Scarcity" promoting privatization, free markets, and deregulation of water systems. [2]
External links
- Alison Caldwell, "Russia puts Kyoto treaty in doubt" 'The World Today - ABC Radio National', December 3 , 2003.
