Down To Earth

The crisis of coronavirus has even our climate warrior focusing on the medical field. Dr.Cara Augustenborg discusses how our healthcare affects the planet, arguing health care is one of the leading producers of environmental pollutants worldwide.

Should we be re-introducing wolves to Ireland? Padraic Fogarty is campaigns officer with the Irish Wildlife Trust, and on this Tuesday's 'Down To Earth' he explained why they are so important to the ecosystem.

Dr. Cara Augustenborg has been taking Ivan Down To Earth every week for 2 years. To celebrate their 99th slot together Dr.Cara Augustenborg quizzed Ivan on how much he has learned in two years.

In this week's Executive Chair we are joined by Steve Tormey, CEO of Toyota Ireland to talk about the ever-evolving world of the automotive industry, what changes Toyota and the wider market has seen in the last few years, and making that transition from traditional engines to greener hybrid and electric vehicles.

With only four days before Ireland goes to the polls, resident environmental scientist and UCD Environmental Policy Cara Augustenborg joined Ivan to discuss how the climate policies in each party manifesto stacked up.    

Every week we go Down To Earth with Dr. Cara Augustenborg, and this week she joined Ivan to discuss a topic close to Ivan's heart off the back of a screening at the IFI this Thursday night of the French movie “Wine Calling."    

Our environmental scientist Dr Cara Augustenborg has been encouraging us to be more mindful of our fragile environment for more than two years on our Down to Earth weekly feature. You'd be forgiven for assuming that she's vegan, but she has resisted the change up to now. However she's decided to take part in Veganuary, but with a scientific approach. Take a listen to her explain her experiment to Ivan, and you can follow her vegan experiment here: https://www.facebook.com/CaraAugustenborgGreen/

The beef protests continue this week, with more picketing by the IFA. Dr Cara Augustenborg took a broader look at the agri sector overall to see where she believes the real issues lie, and she's set her sights on dairy farming. Ivan, however, disagreed completely! Listen to their debate here

We've survived Black Friday and Cyber Monday, but there's still another 22 days until Christmas, so our resident environmentalist Dr.Cara Augustenborg  joined Ivan to discuss how to stay green through the Mayhem.  

Several reports have come out this year proclaiming that the number of insects across the globe is declining rapidly, with 41% of our one million known insect species globally now facing extinction. It’s even been referred to in the media as the “unnoticed apocalypse”, here to convince Ivan why he should be paying more attention to these creepy crawlies is our resident environmental scientist, Dr. Cara Augustenborg.    

Our resident environmentalist Cara Augustenborg joined Mark Cagney on this evening's edition of the Hard Shoulder to tell him about the effects that climate change is having on food - even the little green island of Ireland!

Dr Cara Augustenborg joined Ivan to talk about climate refugees and how it could affect Ireland in terms of internal displacement, and what our obligations are to help people from other countries who find they can't stay anymore due to drastic climate changes.

Cara Augustenborg explains to Ivan how climate change could impact our monuments and heritage sites

This Thursday, October 24 is Ireland’s annual Electric Vehicle Summit in Croke Park and our resident environmentalist, Dr. Cara Augustenborg (an EV owner herself), is speaking at the event alongside Green Party’s Eamon Ryan and others. Now, she already caused a bit of a stir in the Business Post last week with her views on whether Electric Vehicles really are the transport solution to climate change. She thinks our Ministers shouldn’t be making policies about them until they’ve had to live with one for 3-6 months!

When Leo Varadkar was at the UN Climate Summit a few weeks ago, he announced Ireland would no longer explore for more oil off our shores, but for the moment, would continue to allow for gas exploration. This announcement, along with several other announcements from the Government about gas recently, was a key focus of the Extinction Rebellion protest last week and was part of a heated debate in the mansion house last night hosted by Stop Climate Chaos called “The Great Gas debate”. Dr. Cara Augustenborg joined Ivan to highlight all the issues around gas debates in Ireland right now is our own environmentalist and UCD’s environmental policy fellow.  

Budget 2020 was rumored to be a “green” one, so now that it’s official our resident environmental scientist Dr.Cara Augustenborg and fellow in Environmental Policy crunched the numbers  to find out just how green Budget 2020 really is.  

Dr Cara Augustenborg talks to Mark Cagney about National Re-Use Month

As the summer winds down, fitness fanatics are taking their routines back into the gyms. But, what is the environmental impact of going to the gym? Dr. Cara Augustenborg, our resident environmental scientist, told us in today's Down to Earth.

Every Tuesday we go “Down To Earth with Dr.Cara Augustenborg”  but on this evenings Hard Shoulder Ivan was joined by Robert Goss  Sales and Marketing Director of Solar Electric  to discuss the benefits of solar energy.      

Cara Augustenborg looks at how you can re-do the whole house in an eco-friendly way