The UK Government wants to criminalise climate activists and throw them into jail in ways that are becoming ever more authoritarian. We have to resist them.
Image: Insulate Britain activists, who were all jailed for four months this week.
A voiceless 8000 people die every year from cold homes. Countless more will no doubt die without homes.
In the broken system we live under, being warm is a luxury and with inflation soaring, the situation is only going to get worse for millions of people.
Almost 10,000 families in Wales needed support for homelessness in 2019 and a staggering 100,000 families across the UK live in temporary accommodation. Rents and housing costs are rising fast.
Add into this the fact that the cost of living has shot up by more than 4% this year, a Universal Credit cut and years of low pay, and it’s not hard to see why our housing crisis, which is also a crisis of people dying of cold, is spiralling into disaster.
But our natural world has been plunged into disaster too. And burning fossil fuels to heat properties not only denies the poorest in our society a warm home, it contributes massively to the amount of carbon in the atmosphere and global warming.
To avoid the collapse of nature, and with it our entire life system, we have to stop burning fossil fuels. It’s a simple but urgent message.
Insulating our homes effectively is one important part of this. It will mean we don’t need to burn fossil fuels to stay warm but it will also keep everyone warm and will create work in every community.
This can’t be left to individuals, it must be done as a collective and led by those in command of power and resources. But tragically, nothing is being done and our government’s inaction is unforgivable.
Yet nine people have been sent to prison this week under the banner of Insulate Britain, demanding immediate action to make homes well insulated.
These people have names. They are pensioners, they are aunties, uncles, mothers and fathers. They sat in the road, endangering themselves and knowing full well the possibility and likelihood of going to jail.
But for them, the consequences of doing nothing when it comes to insulating our homes far outweigh the penalty of taking action.
Let’s be clear: our old houses will get colder, our bills ever more expensive, our wages lower and more of us will die, get ill and lose our health – and the UK government will do nothing. Our towns, cities, stadiums and parks will flood, forests will burn- and the UK government will do nothing.
More than this, they want to criminalise climate activists and throw them into jail in ways that are becoming ever more authoritarian. They have just placed injunctions on all major roads in the UK, an act that now makes the peaceful act of sitting in the road imprisonable.
Our prisons are already full of people that should not be there. Disproportionately they are poor, black or brown and this system of endless incarceration is only being strengthened by the state’s actions against Insulate Britain.
They don’t care about us and will do anything they can to protect a system that fails the vast majority.
There is no ‘levelling up’. There is no serious action to reduce emissions.
In fact, the job of ‘cutting carbon emissions’ has been intentionally ignored for almost 30 years.
As I write this Vancouver in Canada sits surrounded by flood water inaccessible by road after a 24 hour deluge. Madagascar faces climate change induced famine.
And it was just two years in Wales ago that water ran deep through Pontypridd and other towns and villages.
Will this change? Not unless we do something.
Fortunately, Insulate Britain are not alone in their actions:
As I write this railways across Canada have been blockaded as indigenous groups stop pipeline works. #ShutdownCanada is a movement supporting indigenous sovereignty as multitudes of First Nation communities close their territories to fight back against oil pipelines forced upon them without consent through their lands.
In Australia, the largest coal mine in the country is being shut down for the 10th consecutive day as part of the #BlockadeAustralia series of direct actions.
And there is now the potential for mass movements against climate change, like we have seen in the marches in Cardiff, Glasgow and beyond, that can challenge global power.
This must be combined with struggles against poverty and action by workers over jobs and pay.
From free school meals denied by our own Senedd here in Wales, to complete inaction on climate globally, our leaders are not acting in our interests so we must.
This is why there are 9 people going to jail this week. They’ve chosen to act because the consequences of inaction are simply too great.
Our whole movement must demand justice for them.
