Ola Løkken Nordrum
@olaln
🌱 Fighting for a fairer, greener and healthier planet for all! 🌍 Climate and Sustainability Fellow 🩺 Roaming Anaesthesiology Trainee
Car-centric, pedestrian-hostile junctions like this have NO place in a modern city. 📍 Davitt Rd / Kilworth Rd, Dublin
Proud and humbled to have three pieces published this week: on the need for better cycling infrastructure, more blue, swimmable spaces in Dublin, and why healthcare should help lead the environmentally responsible use of AI. The cycling letter👇 The other two pieces are in the thread below.
The Dublin Lord Mayor wants to ban legal e-bikes from all GAA club grounds?! Populist banana politics at its finest. Legal e-bikes help people leave the car at home and make active travel accessible. This is a spectacularly stupid notion.
Nothing says #ClimateCrisis as a an (electric) car that can reach 96km/h in about 2.5 seconds and has a top speed of 310km/h... In other words... exactly what we need to save the planet according to the Irish Times...
A sad day for the planet. The Irish Minister for Climate Action 'delighted' that Dublin Airport can expand indefinitely and increase emissions in the midst of a catastrophic climate crisis.
The only hope we have of truly reducing our emissions in Ireland is to fundamentally change our transport and agriculture systems.
According to Dublin City Council's own published data, only 900m of cycle path has been completed so far in 2026, most of it an over-engineered isolated greenway section. At that pace, the city's promised active travel network wouldn't be finished for 150 years.
Love that the photo they chose to accompany this headline is, apparently, a car parked on a footpath. Peak Irish media: reporting on one issue while quietly reinforcing the idea that cars are the dominant species in Ireland.
The media are not listening though... The mixed messaging here... idyllic image with a terrifying headline.
The headline gets it right. The image doesn't. A beach photo turns a climate-impact story into a feel-good weather story. Heatwaves are a public health risk Ireland is not prepared for.
Never rains in the Netherlands John. People wouldn't cycle there if it rained as often as it does in Dublin. Just look at this forecast. Sun Sun Sun.
Just another example of lazy design and shoddy visuals from Dublin City Council. There's no wonder our cycling infrastructure is so bad when the planning stage looks like this. It's embarrassing whether they used AI, or worse, if an actual human did this.
Remember that level in Super Mario where the sun is trying to kill you? That's our new reality. That said, we're also the ones fuelling the heat...
Heat kills. Yet, without fail, all Irish media outlets are covering the current heatwave using beach and ice cream pictures. Barely any mention of the harms of heat, nor climate change fuelling more frequent and severe heatwaves.
1,468 people walking or cycling were killed or seriously injured in Dublin between 2016–2024. This is a political choice. Safer, better cycle lanes, lower speed limits, and proper enforcement would save lives. We know what works. Source: Road Safety Authority collision statistics, 2016–2024.
On Dublin’s quays, people cycling are expected to cross three lanes of traffic just to continue straight. A perfect example of what not to do if you want to encourage cycling. Motorists are kings; people cycling and walking are treated as second-class citizens.
Healthcare professionals must use their trusted voice and leverage their influence to rebuild society for health after this crisis. Our piece published in the BMJ today. Link: www.bmj.com/content/393/...
Not only is this terrible, soulless "architecture", but they've also removed the LUAS!?!?
Niall Browne of Dawn Meats: ‘Red meat is actually very good for human health.’ What an insane statement. The world is literally on fire from rampant climate change and fossil fuel conflicts and this is what the Irish Times comes up with.
Look at Paris!!! The city that said NO to cars! For comparison, I moved to Dublin in 2016, and little, if any, meaningful progress has happened since. Dublin continues to prioritise cars over people. #ReimagineDublin
500m of new (over engineered) cycle path, 15 !!! signs. There's something very very wrong with active transport infrastructure in Dublin. This is the opposite of simple, intuitive design.
A key aim of the DCC's Active Travel Programme is decluttering footpaths. Yet along the Fitzwilliam Quay to Londonbridge Rd scheme, they've managed to install a forest of signage for just 500m of cycle path. Good cycling infrastructure should be intuitive & legible, not need constant instructions.
The UN-Habitat Five Principles of Sustainable Neighbourhood Planning. Not to be negative, but bar a few exceptions, Dublin is failing on all five — and spectacularly so. We desperately need to up our ambitions and #ReimagineDublin.
The irony is not lost on me. Time to ban fossil fuel advertising maybe? Free ourselves from their shackles?
These unattractive apartments by the Royal Canal Greenway are not even done, but already stained and dishevelled looking. Designed and built for a climate Ireland has never had, and certainly won’t have as worsening climate change makes our weather patterns wetter and more extreme.
The level of disconnect here is staggering. A youth mental health charity partnering with a fossil fuel company — an industry actively fuelling the greatest threat to human health in the 21st century: the climate crisis.