20 November 2021, 15:00
Insulate Britain are proud that so many people have come onto the streets to demonstrate their support of the retail workers, engineers, teachers, scientists, health care professionals and many others who have been part of the nonviolent civil resistance campaign over the last 9 weeks. This has resulted in the authorities imprisoning nine people with at least 25 more expected to be summoned to the high court in the coming days.
Today’s act of nonviolent civil resistance blocking Lambeth Bridge, London which is likely to result in arrests being made, has been inspired by the jailing of nine [1] peaceful individuals and Insulate Britain’s campaign of repeatedly blocking key road infrastructure.
What Insulate Britain has shown is that this government doesn’t even intend to start insulating our homes, it won’t take the quickest, cheapest, no brainer first step to start rapidly reducing carbon emissions. Boris can’t ‘get on with the job’.
So our government is engaging in a crime against humanity, in the destruction of this country, in the full knowledge of what it is doing. The former Chief Scientific Advisor to the Government, Sir David King says we have “3-4 years to determine the future of humanity”.
For those who hoped for a smooth transition to a green future, the disaster at COP26 and this first round of imprisonments shows only nonviolent civil resistance will now save what our grandparents and their grandparents struggled and died for, our rights and freedoms.
Those who have inherited these traditions must ask the most serious question of their lives “will I be a bystander or will I resist” – resistance does not mean tweets and virtue signaling; as the Suffragettes said, it is “deeds not words”. It means risking harm, humiliation and imprisonment, so we can look into the eyes of our children and say “we did not stand by, we did our very best”.
The situation is clear from this point on: you are in resistance or you are complicit with the mass destruction of life – that is what 3-4 years to determine the future of humanity means. What else could it mean?
We don’t know if we will win, but we can no longer afford to lose. As the great Larry Kramer, founder of ACT UP, screamed, as gay men died in their thousands from Aids: “get in the streets or you’re gonna fucking die”
Ends
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Notes to Editors
[1] The nine are Dr Ben Buse 36, Ana Heyatawin 58, Louis McKenchnie 20, Roman Paluch 28, Oliver Roc 41, Emma Smart 44, Tim Speers 36, James Thomas 47, Ben Taylor 27.
About Insulate Britain
Insulate Britain is a new campaign group that is calling on the UK government to put in place policy and funding for a national home insulation programme starting with all social housing.
We demand the Prime Minister and the government to #getonwiththejob, face up to their responsibility and lead our country through the climate crisis.
We are ordinary British citizens with simple and achievable demands to #INSULATEBRITAIN
The UK government must immediately promise to fully fund and take responsibility for the insulation of all social housing in Britain.
We demand a national home insulation strategy that gives British people the justice they deserve: a future for our loved ones, lower energy bills and safer living conditions.
We are scared: our livelihoods are at risk and the futures of our children are uncertain
The Climate Crisis is a threat to all: we demand the government to act now.
Our Demands
1. That the UK government immediately promises to fully fund and take responsibility for the insulation of all social housing in Britain by 2025;
2. That the UK government immediately promises to produce within four months a legally binding national plan to fully fund and take responsibility for the full low-energy and low-carbon whole-house retrofit , with no externalised costs, of all homes in Britain by 2030 as part of a just transition to full decarbonisation of all parts of society and the economy.
Further information about Insulate Britain and our demands here: https://www.insulatebritain.com/
Technical Report on home energy efficiency here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1jt5FI-kinEXoqZtPDrCvnAVQ2EFn8Aea/view
Insulate Britain ‘Blue Lights’ policy: our policy is, and has always been to move out of the way for emergency vehicles with ‘blue lights’ on.