Colm O'Brien

As Britain swelters through another heatwave, few people will have heard that ministers have quietly dropped plans for solar carports. Cars cooler in summer. Shelter from the rain in winter. Clean electricity all year round. A missed opportunity?

This government is galloping backwards away from doing even the EU average of activities on Palestine. Tours cancelled,visas cancelled, botched OTB, and on and on and on

youtube.com/shorts/FDvTW... SUVs and pickups are more common now on Irish roads. They are more deadly for pedestrians. Time to regulate them.

Again???? Can we just stop polluting our rivers and killing our fish.

‘I can’t work in the farce of climate change cruise tourism anymore’: why Antarctic guides quit their dream jobs share.google/cIiDs9TLqPlt...

14 articles about ice cream. Only 4 mentioned net zero. Back from my Substack hiatus with a deep dive into how Irish media covered the June 2026 heatwave.

When people give out about protecting the fresh water pearl mussel and it blocking development-I always think, what you're being asked to protect is clean water for you to swim or fish in, and your drinking water. Clean water sighing be the most basic thing we demand of our government.

www.euronews.com/2026/07/16/i...

Israeli attacks kill at least five Palestinians in Gaza despite ‘ceasefire’ https://aje.news/medyvg

Murdered by a double tap way back in 2014. 1️⃣ On this day in 2014, the ‘israeli’ occupation forces bombed and killed four young boys who were playing football at a beach in Gaza. The boys: Ismail Mohammed Bakr (9), Zakaria Ahed Bakr (10), Ahed Atef Bakr (10), Mohamed Ramez Bakr (11), were all

What ospreys ask of us is simple: clean, fish-rich waters. Whether they succeed here will depend on whether the fish do too. www.irishtimes.com/life-style/2...

A reminder that, on one day in the last election, FF, FG and SF all visited the IFA and told them that they would work to shelter Agriculture from climate protecting laws.

The Football Association of Ireland will this evening host an Extraordinary General Meeting at Aviva Stadium to vote on a motion regarding the Republic of Ireland's upcoming Nations League fixtures with Israel

I've just emailed my local SF TD Mairead Farrel about this. Think what that money that goes to greyhounds could do for children's sporting and activities. Say no to gambling. Say no to hare coursing and greyhound racing. Put the €19 million annually into rural sporting facilities for children!!

Trump is a rapist. Most of the people he's appointed to his cabinet and nominated to the Supreme Court face credible accusations of sexual harassment. He, his VP, and his sons are actively defending Andrew Tate from prosecution for sex trafficking and rape. Just some things I think about sometimes.

Yesterday @antaisce.bsky.social and @FIE launched a legal challenge to the new judicial review cost caps. These new caps mean, if a member of the public or eNGO wins their case, they will still have to pay tens of thousands to correct the mistake by the State. www.antaisce.org/News/environ...

County councils nearly all turning a blind eye to illegal peat mining. Only one, Longford, making any attempt to apply the law despite the practice being widespread. www.irishtimes.com/politics/202...

“Helsinki hasn’t registered a single traffic-related fatality in the past year…Citing data that shows the risk of pedestrian fatality is cut in half by reducing a car’s speed from 40 to 30km/hr, city officials imposed the lower limit in most of Helsinki’s residential areas and city center in 2021.”

Incredibly unsurprising. Labour is nothing but the party of the status quo.

“Restoration without pollution control is not a policy, it’s a gesture, and an incoherent one at that. It spends public money cleaning up what private and public polluters are permitted to dirty, in a publicly-funded loop without end.” By me for @irishtimes.com www.irishtimes.com/life-style/2...

Everybody in the "climate space" (which means everyone on earth...) needs to understand these mind-blowing figures. Google's "total electricity consumption jumped from 31 terawatt hours (TWh) in 2024 to 43 TWh in 2025." In ONE year. The AI corporate arms race is eating the world.

Lady's Island lake is the end result of decades of agricultural nitrogen water pollution. The only way we can turn the agricultural nitrogen pollution problem around is if those in power admit that their measures aren't working. It's time to actually listen to the evidence, not the spin.

If I read one more reference to 'gold plating' of EU law in Ireland....Can anyone show me the evidence? Should we look to the over half our rivers and lakes polluted? The trend which is getting worse? The 25% of our most pristine waterbodies now lost? A 🧵 www.irishtimes.com/ireland/hous...

Analyst News New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani has doubled down on his comments comparing the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) to “monsters” that “move dark money,” and support the "status quo" in Israel, which includes the killing of children in Gaza.

Blatant lobbying, not for the sake of our country, but for the fossil fuel industry, in which almost all the ultrarich - including, in all likelihood, the proprietors of these newspapers - are heavily invested. These people are not and never will be your friends. www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-uk-...

@micheal-martin.bsky.social the Irish hare is a protected animal. It should not be hunted, caught and then chased by greyhounds. It is only done by a tiny minority of people. It is not what the vast majority of people in rural Ireland want. Please don't vote against this bill.

Why are FFG so keen to continue to support a practice that has almost no support amongst the electorate. The whole rural Ireland shtick is nonsense. I don't get the why of this!!!

JVP commends the American Academy of Religion for its “Resolution in Solidarity with Gaza." The resolution condemns the Israeli regime’s policies of genocide and scholasticide in Palestine, defined by the UN as the “intentional effort to comprehensively destroy the Palestinian education system.”

This is a great example of what's called "pluralistic ignorance" -- the phenomenon whereby most people share a particular view, but they *don't think other people share it*. In this case: most people are concerned about climate change but think others aren't.

Meanwhile multiple phases of BusConnects, all four Luas extensions and various Dart+ projects go unfunded 🙄 Always money for cars and roads… never any for solutions to Irelands congestion problems

It's officially the hottest June day ever. We know who is to blame. Fossil fuel firms. The billionaire media. Weak politicians. We know what we must do. Rapid decarbonisation & adaptation for a healthier, wealthier country safe for future generations.

I made a feature length documentary film, and it’s in the official selection for The Galway Film Fleadh. It’d be great if I don’t end up in the cinema on my own. #Climate #SpeirGorm www.galwayfilmfleadh.com/project/glob...

When reality surpasses fiction! Top: fictional forecast for August 2050, broadcast by French TV in 2014 to warn about the consequences of global warming. Bottom: Real French forecast for yesterday, June 22, 2026.

So far, our transition to a ‘a climate resilient, biodiversity rich and climate neutral economy’ feels less like a journey and more like the TV series ‘Lost’. No one is really sure what’s happening or if anything is happening at all. www.irishexaminer.com/lifestyle/ou...

How much hotter can Europe get? A lot hotter, for a lot longer, with extremes then on either side. Time to call climate crisis a shared emergency and accelerate phasing out fossil fuels and reducing GHGs ? Or will we continue to park it - delay, deflect and deny? www.nytimes.com/2026/06/23/c...

Some good news: church grounds and graveyards across Ireland are becoming havens for birds, bees and bats as part of a biodiversity project inspired by Pope Francis. www.rte.ie/news/regiona...

Fish farms • Consume vast amounts of industrially-trawled wild fish, wasting 75% • Turn rich seabeds below into deadzones • Give parasites & diseases to wild fish • Are horrific for farmed fish • Produce toxic, chemical-laden food • Are eyesores in beauty spots • Harm tourism & fishing jobs ENOUGH

honestly i welcome the data center lobby just openly saying climate goals needed to be trashed so the tech industry can build ai — intense heat waves, record forest fires, worsening natural disasters be damned

This is only the beginning. The climate crisis is here. So why are politicians and most of the media still acting as though this can wait? It can't. We can still avoid some of the worst impacts - but only if we find the courage to act. metro.co.uk/2026/06/22/g...

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The longest day and shortest night of the year, it’s the summer #solstice ☀️ To mark #Midsummer, people traditionally celebrated with dancing, bonfires and merrymaking. In Celtic #mythology, the Oak King ruled during this time of the year, and oak was seen as a symbol of strength and endurance. 🌳

Removal of the 3-day wait for an abortion is the most significant change to Ireland’s abortion laws since 2018. It was one of the recommendations made by an independent review of the legislation in 2023. The report also recommended more clarity on the issue of fatal fetal abnormality.

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Today is #ShowYourStripes day! The warming stripes, created by @edhawkins.org, show how the place where you live has changed over time. Find yours at showyourstripes.info. Download them, share them, and use them to start a conversation today!

Monday in France… #canicule #heatwave. The second heatwave of this year BEFORE the formal start of summer… #stopflying4fun. We live 50km north of Toulouse.