earth science

Insulate Britain protests

Insulate Britain protests is a earth science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Insulate Britain protests rather than just read about it. In short: A series of protests by the group Insulate Britain involving traffic obstruction began on 13 September 2021. The group blockaded the M25 and other motorways in the United Kingdom, and roads in London and the Port of Dover.

Key takeaways

Insulate Britain protests belongs to earth science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Insulate Britain protests to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Insulate Britain protests from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

A series of protests by the group Insulate Britain involving traffic obstruction began on 13 September 2021. The group blockaded the M25 and other motorways in the United Kingdom, and roads in London and the Port of Dover. The protesters demanded that the government improve the insulation of all social housing in the UK by 2025 and retrofit all homes with improved insulation by 2030. Improved insulation of homes would likely reduce the use of fuel, such as natural gases and oil, and adjust the internal temperature, thus improving energy efficiency in British housing and mitigating climate change. The group has drawn support from some, and condemnation from others including individuals within the government. On 17 November 2021, nine protesters were imprisoned for breaching an injunction against road blockade protests. On 2 February 2022, five protesters were imprisoned for the same reason, with eleven others receiving suspended sentences.

Background Insulate Britain is an environmental activist group, founded by six members of the global environmental movement Extinction Rebellion. Their methods slightly differ from that of Extinction Rebellion, but they share the same overall target: to reduce the rate of climate change. The group began hosting both online and in-person events in July 2021, also raising money for direct action. They use civil disobedience as a tactic. Founded with the aim of demanding insulation across the United Kingdom, the group laid out two specific demands for its September 2021 protests. The first is that the British government fund insulation of all social housing by 2025, and the second is that, by the end of 2021, the government must create a plan to fund retrofitting of insulation of all homes in Britain by 2030. Insulate Britain created a Parliament petition for the first demand. According to The Guardian, the group's demands are in line with consensus among climate scientists and policy experts that home insulation—including when retrofitted—is an environmental priority, saves money to occupants and is beneficial to the economy.

Protests The protests began on 13 September 2021, when protesters sat in roads at five junctions (Junctions 3, 6, 14, 20 and 31) on the M25 motorway, followed by further protests on 15, 17, 20, 21 and 23 September. In an escalation of the protests, activists blocked the main carriageway of the M25 in both directions between junctions 9 and 10 on 21 September. Protesters walked out onto both sides of the motorway from junction 10. Thirty-eight protesters were arrested for various offenses, such as criminal damage, causing danger to road users, willful obstruction of the highway and causing a public nuisance. On 24 September, the group blockaded the Port of Dover. Several protesters were arrested. On 29 September, protesters blocked the M25 again near junction 3. The protest started around 7:30am but by 8:53am the police had put out a tweet stating that the section of the M25 had been reopened. During the protests, activists glued themselves to the slip roads of targeted motorway exits or to live lanes of the motorway, making them inaccessible to vehicles. The protesters also poured paint onto sections of the carriageway. Further protests took place on 1 October with disruption to the M1 and M4 motorways. Thirty-nine protesters were arrested. On 4 October, Insulate Britain protesters blocked the Blackwall Tunnel, on the A102 which connects the London boroughs of Tower Hamlets and Greenwich in London. Thirty-eight protesters were arrested. The group suspended its protests on 14 October, saying that Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister of the UK, had 11 days to make "a meaningful or trustworthy statement" or else the protests would resume. The protests resumed on 25 October, with 61 activists blocking roads at the London locations Upper Thames Street, Bishopsgate and Limehouse Causeway. During morning rush hour of 2 November, the group blocked the M56 and A538 near Manchester Airport and the A4400 in Birmingham. The group's last road protest to date took place on 4 November, when sixty-two protesters blocked roads around Parliament Square.

Aftermath On 7 February 2022 the group self-declared "with a heavy heart" that the series of protests had failed in their aim to force the government into taking action. Since November 2021 a number of those arrested have been sentenced to prison; including nine in November 2021 and five in February 2022. In March 2023, a further Insulate Britain protester was jailed for five weeks for causing a nuisance to the public. In response to actions by Insulate Britain and other groups such as Just Stop Oil the UK government has announced its aim to pass through a series of new measures to restrict the ability for groups to disrupt national infrastructure as a form of protest.

Reaction

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Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Insulate Britain protests

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Insulate Britain protests claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In earth science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Insulate Britain protests before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Insulate Britain protests ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Insulate Britain protests

In research: Insulate Britain protests appears in earth science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Insulate Britain protests in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Insulate Britain protests is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 2020s in Birmingham, West Midlands, 2020s in Greater Manchester, 2020s in Hertfordshire, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Insulate Britain protests outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Insulate Britain protests in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Insulate Britain protests means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Insulate Britain protests out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Insulate Britain protests in simple terms?

Why does Insulate Britain protests matter?

Because it connects several earth science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Insulate Britain protests?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Insulate Britain protests.