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WE HAVE BREACHED 1.5 degrees. Last year was the hottest on record. January 2025 was the hottest January on record. March 2025 was the hottest on record in Europe.
What does this mean for human health? The climate and environmental crisis is an unprecedented health crisis, through negative effects relating to extreme weather events, trauma, infectious disease, food insecurity and famine, energy poverty, displacement and air pollution, to name but a few.
In fact, almost everyone living on our planet is breathing in air that does not meet the World Health Organization (WHO) air quality standards. As a direct result of air pollution, between 1,300 to 1,700 Irish citizens die prematurely every year. Globally, this figure amounts to the loss of just shy of seven million lives. The climate crisis is already claiming lives.
The main driver of this health emergency: fossil fuels.
In spite of this knowledge, emissions worldwide from coal, oil and gas rose by almost 1% in 2024. Just 36 fossil fuel companies are responsible for half of the world’s CO2 emissions, and to add insult to injury, these companies are profiting heavily from this escalating health emergency.
Over the last 50 years, the oil and gas industry has delivered $2.8bn per day in profit. At a time when the world should be investing in renewable, sustainable energy, fossil fuel giants like BP are slashing their climate targets and cutting renewable investments, choosing instead to ramp up fossil fuel production in the pursuit of profit.
Despite some positive developments, Ireland is failing to meet greenhouse gas emission targets. Ireland may be faced with billions in climate fines, creating what would likely be “the second biggest fiscal disaster in the history of the State”.
One clear example of our failure to reduce our emissions is the transport sector. Not only are we failing to wean ourselves from our collective car addiction, but only 14% of new cars bought in Ireland in 2024 were electric, a drop from 2023.
Advertising for more fossil fuel use during a climate-health crisis is madness. In June 2024, UN chief, António Guterres, called on governments and the media to enact a ban on fossil fuel advertising, just as they have once done with tobacco. Cities such as The Hague and Edinburgh have already introduced such bans, limiting companies such as airlines and airports, fossil fuel companies, car manufacturers and cruise ship companies from advertising their products.
We need to make it easy for people to make the right choices, but how can we achieve this when everywhere we look, we are being bombarded with advertisements, influencing us to consume more and more? To go on that extra holiday. To buy the latest car. Where is the advertising warning us of the consequences of these decisions? Where is the messaging telling us to be happy with what we have?
Studies have shown that Irish people are willing to change their behaviour to reduce emissions, but often lack the means to do so. Limiting fossil fuel companies’ visibility in the public sphere is one simple way to enable people to reduce their consumption and emissions. Fossil fuel companies spend billions on advertising every year. Imagine what these resources could achieve if they were deployed to reduce emissions, not increase them.
We need to challenge social norms, break through the inertia and reclaim the narrative from the fossil fuel industry, and we need to do it now. We are out of time.
It is deeply concerning that we broke 1.5ºC of warming in 2024. Increasingly extreme weather is just one of nearly infinite consequences of a warming atmosphere, and Storm Éowyn is a prime example of the destruction and disruption that can happen from a single weather event. How can we not expect our weather to change when we have pumped close to 41.6 billion tonnes of CO2 into our atmosphere last year alone? Are we going to sit back and let this become the new normal?
Advertising for more fossil fuel consumption in 2025 is a symptom of a perilously short-sighted system, where short-term economic growth is valued above the health and stability of our people. We cannot have eternal economic growth on a finite planet.
The Institute and Faculty of Actuaries have outlined that the global economy could face a 50% loss in GDP between 2070 and 2090 without immediate carbon reductions, and The Faculty of Actuaries in the UK has warned us that “our economy may not exist at all if we do not mitigate climate change”.
2025 must be a year defined by tangible, impactful climate action. The new government must rise to the challenge. We urgently need to phase out fossil fuels, and banning their advertisement and sponsorship is a small but crucial first step.
As healthcare workers, we are calling on the Irish government to take decisive action to reduce emissions and improve human health.
Health, stability, and prosperity over short-term profit. Let’s fuel health, not harm.
Dr Johnny Collins and Dr Ola Løkken Nordrum are members of Irish Doctors for the Environment.
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This is complete madness.
The sooner the loony left are put firmly back in their box, the better things will be for everyone in this country.
@Marjory: It’s wild how an article written by doctors, warning about real-world health risks from fossil fuels, gets met with insults and bizarre denialism. Climate change isn’t about being ‘woke’, it’s about recognising what’s already happening, record-breaking heat, rising costs, and worsening health outcomes. Banning fossil fuel ads is not the end of freedom, it’s about removing manipulation from an industry that profits by harming us. We did it for tobacco when the science was clear. This is the same playbook, just with a bigger lobby and even higher stakes.
And no, shouting ‘loony left’ doesn’t change the facts.
@Marjory: that won’t change anything. I don’t listen to ads, I still want my diesel as living in countryside and doing 20000+ km a year. train are not there, bus have limited routes and not practical. that will not stop people to travel.
but I like believers , may be they took an oath and ready to serve the poor and the needed.
@Marjory: let’s just go back to the Stone Age!
@Marjory: it’s just the truth, why get so triggered? Try raise your family and drive your car on no planet.
@Dominic Leleu: So true. Why not globally cut back on personal spending and consumerism? Why not produce goods of sound quality, that can be repaired/fixed and last long? I remember the first washing machine we bought, a second hand one, 12 years old and it lasted us another nearly 16 years when parts no longer became available.
Just because folk nowadays want to live a quasi-VIP lifestyle with designer goods, city trips, weekend trips, two or three holidays per year and new cars every few years, doesn’t make coal or oil the baddie.
Over the last 60 years solid fuels – or their respective carbon footprints -, which can have their place, have been improved. Keep improving, but put people first, not business conglomerates, governments or bizarre ideologies.
@Rafa C: You fell for the propaganda.
These doomsday prophecies have been happening since the 60s. None happened.
The spanish floods were caused by Spain getting rid of 200 dams since 2021.
Stop pushing the lies, science is bought and paid for.
Three types of lies.
Lies, damned lies and statistics.
@Nick: straight out of the tinfoil hat starter pack. Dismissing science because you don’t like the outcome doesn’t make it go away. You say science is bought and paid for, but ignore that fossil fuel companies have spent billions shaping public opinion. Lies, damned lies and… denialism dressed up as cynicism.
@Niall English: i tell you what : make a car with a clean energy (even electric) that can recharge in 5 minutes, using the infrastructure we have in place, and i would agree.
Obviously it will also have to be cheaper and cost less
Our days that’s a mini mortgage
Also second hand went sky high because aa lot of people have to find a way to pay their bubble loan left in order to be able to get a new loan ….
Now you cant find anything decent under 15K diesel and good condition … and most will need 1k to 3k repair because never been looked after.
Let’s plant more trees, but Pippa Hackett, Eamon Ryan and theie fellow travellers in the Forest Service effectively stopped that. The only forests being planted are 1ha native woodland plots. Commercial forestry has been eviscerated. We import Brazilian rainforest woodchip to burn in Offaly. We export our pulp to Germany. We can not make peat briquettes but we import German and Latvian peat briquettes. Home grown wood is renewable but the Greens banned fireplaces,so during the big storms, people could not heat their houses.None of it makes sense. The Irish environmental lobby is idiotic and corrupt.
@Hunt Ley: Not one single part of this word salad is accurate.
@Michael: it actually is unfortunately
@Michael: which part is untrue? As far as I know he’s absolutely correct.
@Hunt Ley: Fireplaces aren’t banned (yet), certain solid fuels are.
@Michael: actually it it. Planting has been effectively stopped.
Before she lost her place in Government, to which she had not been elected,Pippa Hacket eith the backing of her fellow travellers in the Forest Service attempted to block the planting of Sitka Spruce on new ground. She and the Greens wanted to stop commercial forestry along with Forest Service traitors. There needs to be an inquiry into Green sabotage of our country.
@Athena: new builds are sealed houses. Fireplaces are being relegated to a thing of the past. More nonsense . So let the old dear stop burning wood and coal to stay warm while countless aeroplanes fly overhead
Most of Earth’s history was warmer than now.The Poles have been ice free for most of the last 650 million years since complex life evolved.
We are living in an unusually cool period.
Climate Alarmism typified by articles such as this are what we need to ban, they achieve nothing other than alienate people.
@D W Chaney: Spot on, I’m an environmentalist all the way but this kinda codology & ‘airy fairy’ juvenile fluffy tripe IS what alienates people 100% AWAY from the bigger picture. I’m loathe to say this but these loony cult like ramblings probably push interested parties further away from the ‘ simple yet effective’ actions we could & should be embracing
@D W Chaney: yes but people and our crops weren’t
@Liam OTailliuir:
But our forefathers were.
@D W Chaney: and there was also 5 Mass Extinctions.
@ray murphy: not for 650 million years. lol.
@D W Chaney: Three types of lies.
Lies , damned lies and statistics.
Science is bought and paid for by the globalists.
Plenty of scientists rebuke the climate scam but none get media attention.
Only shills allowed. No debate.
Another day another alarmist article on climate change.They’ve gone on about this to such an extreme that the message has lost all meaning or effect any more.It’s like the boy who cried wolf on steroids.
However true it might be has just lost all impact from these never ending doomsday,preachy,smug,boring articles
@Johnny King: so speaking the truth triggers you? Try live your life on no planet, try it
@Housing Hunger Games: not ‘triggered’ no.Just bored by it.I’ll be fine on this planet here for the next few decades thanks.
You spend your life worrying about it.I’ll keep enjoying myself.Try not to be ‘triggered’ by this response good lad.
What I hate about these articles is that they try to guilt trip ordinary working middle class people.
Since the days when they came out that cows farting was affecting the environment…I was gone.
They want change, then hit those with private jets, the super wealthy who have mansions and waste. Trying to guilt the people who work middle income jobs who go on maybe 4 flights a year, sort their green, brown and black bin.
@Mary Kelly: Why would anyone need to go on four flights a year??
These woke punks! Living in cuckoo land. Trump needs to incarcerate this lot.
Never a day goes by without a climate change emergency article from the journal. Give it a rest will ya FFS !
Ban ads for private healthcare. Wrecking people’s heads while they can’t afford it.
@Furious George – The Wasp: The good doctors studiously avoided mentioning anything like that.
Next they will be saying we need a licence per child.
They’ll have people using horses and donkeys for travelling. Complete and utter nonsense.
Besides, electricy will cause just as much problems as fossil fuels but in a different way.
Want more people on board with pro climate attitude. Stop penalising everyone for their “choices” when the bulk of the population don’t have a choice. We don’t all live in Dublin or other built up areas. Car tax and fuel levies to discourage car use. Great. I’d guess 80% of the population don’t have a practical alternative to a car, so what I see isn’t enviro policy I see me taxed taxed more in the guise of “green policy”. I don’t think there’s been a “Green” policy that hasn’t taken money off me so I’m now pretty suspicious of anything the Gov label green.
@Tim: Speak for yourself. My solar panels, electric bike, lower public transport costs are saving me money and making me money.
@Tim: great comment
Green agenda just tax people into poverty and only Green Parry lackeys can travel to “save the world”. You can try stop all modes of transport to be left with walking,cycling or using a horse and carriage would still be claimed there’s to much emissions taking place.
@Ailbhe MacThomais: I’d happily have a horse and cart before I’m forced to go ev.
@Athena: who you fooling. Horse and cart in mid winter !!??
Go away
In the words of the leader of the free world, burn baby burn.
@common sense: drill baby drill !
@David Owens: haha yeah
@common sense: you don’t think it’s a bit suss coming from a man that’s nearly at his end!
This article is right. Sure, our lives will be in some ways made more narrow by having less choices. But were our grandparents lives miserable? They didn’t consume a quarter of what we did but lived fulfilled lives. And by consuming too much in 2025 are we stealing from our grandchildren? They may end up without the basics if we are not more careful.
@Denis Shields: I have to respectfully disagree. My grandparents era is something I for one would not want to go back to, high child mortality, women having 10 plus children, lack of money, no education. My own grandmother had 15 pregnancies, also lost 2 children to preventable diseases now, she could not afford to educate her children past 14 years old. My grandfather working back breaking work all his life, yet always stressed about money to feed and cloth his children.
Yes my grandparents had no electricity, no holidays, some days nothing to eat, a small 2 bed house, but do I think they were happier???
@Mary Kelly: I wouldn’t go back to my grandparents era for all the reasons you listed, but surely we can achieve a bit of balance. We went from having nothing to having far too much and humanity has not gone much better, far from it. We could keep medical progress, improvements in education and life comfort and discard the vacuity of some ‘advances’. Going halfway around the world to take selfies and post them on Instagram is not exactly necessary. Nor are plastic cups, disposable everything, etc
@Mary Kelly: OK. But that’s if you are happy to live off the backs of those who live far less privileged lives than your grandparents, and who don’t have the resources even they did.
The only thing that can stop climate change is more taxes.
The corporate plan is “drill Baby drill” and then charge an arm and a leg for very expensive Carbon Capture, on a mega industrial scale. No. The only workable model is a mass move forward on the new nuclear technologies. You have an SMR leading a data centre. Then all the waste heat to the 24/7/365, totally pesticide free growing. Then the Fly, their larvae eating the food waste, before being fed to fish and fowl. Most though seem to want a massive combination of Wind / Solar and commensurate amounts of LNG, which gets our Carbon problem nowhere. “But this wonderful new wind farm will do 30,000 homes” – Yes, for 40% of the time.!
Dr. Dumb and Dr. Dumber. Literal nonsensical tripe, never lived in the real world, sheltered in academia with back patting and ‘peer reviewing’ GIGO models.
Ban adds of women talking about there bulky pee pants and periods while I’m eating me dinner.
Nothing happens without provision and we’re not capable of building infrastructure unfortunately this abismal leadership is part of the problem, while Eamon and Roderic want genuine change, they want to charge you more for it at the same time as building nothing. I’m all for it, going to be a huge future market, currently trying to make the whole place self sustaining because it makes sense, but I’m over a barrell every step of the way. Lift VRT on EV’s tomorrow morning? allow Irish individuals and dealers to capitalise on cheaper markets?… no? then no.
Absolutely living in a cave these people what alternatives do we have?
Before posting comments, we are encouraged to be civil. I would suggest that this includes engaging with what someone says, staying on topic and not dismissively labelling them in a lazy _ad hominem_ attack.
Why is there always this assumption that acting on climate change means we have to go back to a time when people used horses and carts to get around.
Walking /cycling has multiple benefits not only to the climate but improves mental health, physical health increasing quality of life and life expectancy.
Also adequate public transport can work in more populated areas, current solutions for less populated areas could be electric cars and newer options
There is no requirement to stop buying things, but buying better quality products that last is better than buying cheap poor quality things and usually more cost effective. ‘Disposable or throwaway’ products are not actually gone they are just somewhere else. In the sea, in rivers or in clothes mountains in developing countries.
Scam. Came from the club of Rome.
Inventing fake crises to rob the country and digitally enslave them. Just like convid.
It’s also to bankrupt farmers and steal their land. Food/fuel ration people.
That NGO they’re quoting is funded by the government, just like the media pushing the lies.
Wake up folks.
@Nick: yes the scam is 400,000 people in Europe at risk from flooding, another 489,000 died from heat related illnesses; the most recent report by EU Copernicus shows that Europe is the fastest warming continent based on the climate meteorological data; not to mention the IPCC and the WMO reports.
Meanwhile, the fossil fuel industry and lobbyists are spending millions on ensuring that we should ignore the reality.
By the way the greenhouse effect was identified by scientists in the 1800s, by 1900 scientists were aware that this effect could increase temperature but it was thought to be a positive thing at the time. Furthermore studies from 1950s had unequivocal evidence of manmade climate change. By 1962 Shells own research warned of the risks..
I agree completely with this idea. It’s so obvious but will never be allowed to happen.
Too much focus on climate, the world will morph and regulate itself over the longer term. Yes mankind will be gone but that’s a natural attrition and just the life cycle of homosapien, and the globe will heal and other lifeforms will survive through it all. We seem to try fight the enivetable, plain silly.
Why stop there. We should all go back to wearing lion cloths
What a load of trype
Are you joking young people buy houses and cover garden in stone for second car. Not one collapses coffee cups before putting in Street bin. People under 25 have in their life time much higher carbon emissions than somebody who was in their 20s in 80s.
Climate lock downs on the way
World health organisation, funded by eugenics mad bill gates , ran by Dr. Tedros who was directing the army to genocide Ethiopians. 2 million people dead.
Nominated for the international criminal court by a Nobel peace prize winner and here you are pushing the lies @ journal.
Traitors to the human race the whole lot of you bought and paid for media. Presstitutes with no morals, pushing climate scam lies.
Pippa Hackett and the Greens tried to block the planting of Sitka Spruce on new sites before she was kicked out of government. The greatest gang od saboteurs we have ever had in government.
Sure stop everything we should all migrate on foot to warmer climates in winter – stop heat pumps and air con
Wean ourselves from the collective car addiction?! Because the public transport is rubbish. As a European city we have no metro, tram or train to our airport. Check out Copenhagen or Berlin or anywhere else! Cars jammed into single lanes causing lots of exhaust fumes. Because what other choice is there!? Underused cycle lanes. Ghost buses. Decades to get the Luas anywhere onto the Northside and costs billions!
First of all I can’t afford an electric car ,they too dear .
And if I was given 1 for free I would not be able to charge it as I live on a street so no points of charge.
Ok if you have a drive way
Industry is the main cause, people have little impact, industry likes cheap fossil fuels so we are all gonna die, unfortunately.
another lunatic group of two indulging a similarly lunatic media …grow up
Oh **”k off.
Hahaha
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