‘We’ll be hated, but it will stir things up’: Insulate Britain on what happened next – and being right all along | Insulate Britain

26 comments

  1. Priti Patel tweeted: “We will not stand by while these reckless and selfish criminals disrupt the freedoms and livelihoods of hard-working people.”

    The Climate Catastrophe will be far more disruptive to people’s lives and the government doing more to curtail people’s freedoms, and next to nothing is being done to prevent it. Go figure.

  2. As ever: the *cause* they’re fighting for isn’t what drew that hatred, it was the method by which they ‘stirred things up’.

    I could say I’m campaigning for abolishing corrupt politicians but if I do it by punching strangers in the street, they’re still going to hate me for punching them.

  3. What climate protestors are saying needs to be heard. The planet is fucked, huge climate-caused migration is coming while fossil fuel lobbyists have worked hard for over 30years to minimise efforts to reduce fossil fuel use and we have a government who effectively bans on shore wind, spends a pittance on cycling infrastructure, continues to [subsidise fossil fuel extraction](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jan/23/uk-has-biggest-fossil-fuel-subsidies-in-the-eu-finds-commission)
    and [gave up on insulating homes](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/apr/19/where-britains-journey-to-insulation-went-wrong) in 2013 (despite home insulation being a very effective CO2 reduction strategy.

  5. Politicians and right wing media idiots, changing the narrative, to blame the activists for their own non action on climate change, Brexit will make this worse as our corrupt government no longer have to meet EU targets for dumping raw sewage, achieve clean air in cities etc…but hey let’s not be inconvenienced by protesters…

  6. They were literally just right. If we had listened to them the energy crisis would be far less severe and we wouldn’t be fucking freezing in our homes right now.

  7. I understand that they’re concerned that the planet is effectively dying. I get it. What I don’t get is why they aren’t taking their anger out on the big causers of the problem eg China and the USA (2/195 counties) thst produce almost half of all global CO2 emissions (specifically 43% in total). I don’t see them protesting outside the Chinese or American embassies at all…

  9. I had a long and semi-circular conversation with my girlfriend once, trying to get across that I don’t consider what IB/XR etc are doing to be worthwhile.

    -MPs make law

    -law is (generally) in response to public opinion

    -public opinion is swayed by the media

    ​

    They can run around committing acts of [criminal vandalism](https://www.hammersmithtoday.co.uk/#!pages/shared:common:conjuststopoil2208) all day long, but as long as the vast majority of the British press continue to lie on a spectrum between centrist-presenting-as-left and “Hurrah for the Blackshirts” their efforts are wasted, and only serve to poison the opinion of any members of the public who weren’t against them.

    The BBC’s foolish decision to give the oxygen of publicity to climate skeptics, antivaxers and proponents of other ideas that should be left to quietly die in the dark has very much contributed to the mess we’re in.

  10. Need to think on more than, what about the economy bollocks. Unfortunately as what happened when they stated two weeks ago that we were using 10% less energy and the price rose 10%,next day. Its about shareholders profits and little else, bald monkey is a fkn idiot.

  11. Alternative title: “We’re annoying people by protesting in support for a popular policy in exchange for an ego-boost and to satisfy a savor complex all while helping the government pass authoritarian policing bills”.

    By October 2021, 21% of people moderately opposed Insulate Britain’s (IB) and 51% strongly opposed their behavior, with only 18% of people supporting them. Additionally, 73% of people agreed their behavior would hinder the cause with only 5% agree that it would help.

    This is despite 40% of Britain’s population labelling the environment as a top national concern in November 2021 and 84% of people supporting government grants to make homes energy efficient and 76% of people supporting strict rules for how energy-efficient homes are.

    There is one thing Extinction Rebellion (EX) and its splinter groups (which IB is) has helped achieve, helping the government justify The Police, Crime, Sentencing & Courts Bill of 2022. By March 2022, a month before the bill was written into law, 35% of people believed the police we’re not strict enough on disruptive protesters, a statistic which shot up to 52% among individuals disrupted by protesters.

    The UK public has become supportive of this authoritarian bill, with 62% of the general public support giving police power to remove protesters blocking roads, 51% of people support giving the police power to place start and end times on protests, 63% of people want to make it a criminal offence to glue yourself to a surface and 53% of people support giving police power to set a noise limit to protests. Concerningly, 43% of the population in October 2021 supported custodial sentences for disruptive protesters

    The link between EX and its splinter groups engaging in “peaceful disobedience” and support for laws that restrict the right to protest to me is clear and concerning. There is even a [conspiracy theory suggesting IB is a government plant.](https://www.vice.com/en/article/akvd38/insulate-britain-conspiracy-theory)

    My personal problem with EX and its splinter groups are how their members and leaders are massive hypocrites. Indigo Rumbelow, just stop oil activist who gave an infamous interview on Sky news was exposed for taking many flights across the globe. Aviation is one of the largest greenhouse gas admitters. Roger Hallam, founder of IB, doesn’t have insulation (despite being able to afford it) and freely uses gas to heat his home, he even admitted to being a hypocrite (at least he’s honest). Protesters often turn up and leave in SUVs, an expensive car with a high greenhouse gas output. Protests had phone charger outputs powered by petrol generators when solar ones exist. I view them as over-pampered middle-class folk with a savor complex and a grandiose image of themselves.

    Polling data was collected from YouGov polls.

    ps. Sorry for any spelling mistakes or typos.

    Edit: Whoever gave me a silver, thank you. Also, I know my comment has caused controversy, I’m happy to hear from people who think I’m wrong.

  12. Bunch of clowns who clearly don’t work and just love the publicity. Zero respect for them and if they’re in the road on my way to work, I’m physically removing them.

  13. You might not like their methods but you will hate the effects of climate change even more. Being late for work is annoying today but record heatwaves, droughts and floods will be even worse. Crop failures were terrible this year but could easily get worse and we will only more mouths to feed on top of that. Cold weather like we have just seen will also become more common and could be more extreme too. Anyone complaining about climate protesters cannot see the bigger picture: our lifestyle is killing the planet and the effects are already apparent. What happens next is up to us and too many people are too shortsighted to care.

  14. It’s all well and good protesting but the problem with your “movement” is that by gluing yourselves to the road and basically fucking up the day of thousands of people not responsible for this atrocity is mot exactly making you any friends. The local kebab shop is much better at bringing news to the consciousness of thousands than you are. I would bet if you offered people a free kebab or some worthless but desirable trinket you would have the population in the palm of your hand. People are fucking stupid, the government’s know this only to well. Now go and think hard about that.

  15. I actively sell insulation and I don’t like Insulate Britain’s methods.

    They definitely are hated and turned people against their cause. Which is a shame.

  16. Wait, so the insulate Britain protesters were vilified, made jokes of but were then proved right. Now most have joined Stop Oil, which is vilified and being made jokes of… Wonder how many times it has to happen before normal people ho “huh, this seems to be a trend, these people protest very firmly, get made fun of and ignored, then shit blows up and proves them right… Maybe, just maybe we should listen”… Oh wait, that wont happen because some shifty shot in parliament says to ignore them and everyone knows how trust worthy a politician is.

  18. Go protest in one of those many countries out there causing most of the pollution and doing nowt about it

    Most people in this country are on board with the message

  19. I don’t get why right-wingers aren’t the most staunch environmental advocates possible? If you hate illegal immigration, then why would you allow a status quo to continue which flood the country with 100’s of thousands of climate refugees?

  20. ECO FASCISM.

    ​

    Bet ya Hitler said the fucking same thing about his little master race and the Jewish people and then went along with what he thought he was right for the world.

  21. At this point j honestly believe Insulate Britain are a government run group designed to garner hatred for protesters. With the ultimate goal of forbidding protests entirely.

  23. We all know there’s a climate emergency, but that doesn’t make Insulate Britain *right* for what they’re doing.

    They’re going to get one of themselves killed at this rate, because they’re just pissing people off and one day the *wrong* person is going to take out their frustrations on one of them.

    They deserve all the scorn and ire they get for blocking the roads and stopping people getting where they’re going. They’re protesting the wrong people and they’re not making anyone sympathetic to them.

  25. I think it was Jack Dee who once said when referring to individual environmentalist efforts, something along the lines of ‘it’s like turning up to a earthquake with a dust pan and brush and asking, “can I help?”‘

    That must have been at least 10 years ago I heard him do that bit. Nothing has really changed since then.

    It doesn’t feel as if any one individual can make a difference, so no one tries. Essentially, its a prisoners dilemma.

    It’s a fundamentally global policy issue and until society starts directly being in the pocket over the long term, nothing meaningful will happen. Unfortunately, it doesn’t make a material difference to anyone if you are environmentally conscious or not at the moment so people are not inclined to bother in favour of other priorities.

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