By Sonia Elks
LONDON, Nov 17 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – Nine members of the climate campaign group Insulate Britain have been sentenced to jail for breaching an injunction banning them from blocking major roads.
The protest group has hit the headlines in recent months, as part of an increasingly disruptive movement that is using civil disobedience to push for urgent climate action.
Here are some key facts about Insulate Britain:
Who are Insulate Britain and what do they want?
Insulate Britain’s first protest took place on Sept. 13, with dozens of activists blocking several junctions of the M25 motorway which encircles London, causing major disruption to some rush hour traffic.
The climate activist group is demanding that the government insulate millions of homes to tackle planet-heating emissions and move away from polluting industries to avert the worst scenarios of devastation outlined by scientists.
Spokesperson Liam Norton said Insulate Britain was founded by six members of Extinction Rebellion, which has also caused chaos with members glueing themselves to a plane, train and streets to call for faster action to combat climate change.
Though Insulate Britain shies away from naming leaders and says it has a decentralised structure, its most high-profile figures include Norton, an electrician from south London and fellow spokesperson Cameron Ford, a carpenter.
What are their demands?
Insulate Britain wrote to Prime Minister Boris Johnson in August calling on him to commit to fully insulating all social housing in Britain by 2025, and to lay out a legally-binding plan to retrofit all homes to low-carbon standards by 2030.
While other environmental groups have raised the profile of the climate crisis, Norton said Insulate Britain aimed to go a step further by pushing for concrete actions and investment to tackle emissions.
“What climate movement needs is a win,” he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. “It was about showing that we could highlight something and get potentially get some movement from the government on it.”
