My name is Dr Colette Harmsen. I am a veterinarian, wildlife defender and peaceful forest protester, and I have just spent three months in gaol at your expense for protecting Tasmania's native forests.
All of my illegal activities are related to peaceful forest protesting and I conduct these activities because of my ongoing fear about the climate emergency and my love for wildlife, the national environment and wild places.
I wonder what kind of rehabilitation you, the legal and political systems that govern what we do and say, would suggest for me and my fellow environmental crusaders to prevent us from reoffending, given our fear of alarming climate change and our passion for the welfare of wildlife and protection of native forests.
Here are some ideas I thought you might consider implementing to prevent us from caring so much about the environment:
- brainwash us to stop us from caring;
- tell us that climate change is not real;
- make money, capitalism and greed our only focus;
- make us believe that native forest logging does nothing to destroy endangered species habitat;
- explain to us how farming animals is good for the environment and that we must eat more meat;
- make us believe that fishing is sustainable and does not damage the environment;
- brainwash us into thinking that the only good forest is a “working forest”;
- explain to us how farming, mining and forestry chemicals do not run into waterways and harm and kill fish and other wildlife;
- encourage us to fly in aeroplanes more frequently;
- show us that digging mines in environmentally sensitive areas is a good idea;
- tell us to watch more commercial, sensationalist, brainwashing television;
- teach us to be more apathetic, ignorant and selfish;
- show us how to shift the blame for our responsibilities and actions onto everyone else;
- make us angry at the state of things, but never angry enough to do anything about it;
- show us how we must do what our parents and their parents did, and that we have no choice but to make all the mistakes that generations have made before us;
- give us drugs to make us stop caring about anything other than our own self-interests;
- teach us how the environment is the enemy of jobs and growth and must be punished; and
- teach us how the legal system is always right.
Without the successful intervention of these methods, there is no way anybody I know is going to ever stop caring about the environment enough to conform to the legal system.
Dr Colette Harmsen is a veterinarian, wildlife defender and forest activist. She is a strong believer in non-violent direct action and is prepared to go to gaol to defend Tassie's forests.
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