A new report has said that Ireland’s car dependent transport system is fuelling a slow-motion health and climate emergency, driven by physical inactivity, chronic illness and environmental degradation.<\/p>\n
It says that embedding active travel into daily lives would deliver a range of health and environmental benefits for everyone.<\/p>\n
The report ‘Active Travel: The Magic Pill’ is from the Irish Climate and Health Alliance, which is made up of over 30 medical, health and social care professional organisations and other groups.<\/p>\n
It estimates that physical inactivity costs Ireland \u20ac1.13 billion a year in healthcare.<\/p>\n
Just 30 minutes of walking or cycling a day can reduce the risk of heart disease, stroke, diabetes and some cancers, according to the report.<\/p>\n
The findings show that six in ten adults are insufficiently active, only a minority of children meet physical activity guidelines and just four out of ten primary schoolchildren walk or cycle to school.<\/p>\n
‘We sit for the vast majority of the day. We sit at desks, in cars, on couches, and it’s taking its toll’<\/p>\n
Private cars are still used for most journeys made by people, even when many of these trips are relatively short, 2km or less.<\/p>\n
The report says that walking or cycling would take 680,000 cars off the road every day in the five largest cities.<\/p>\n
It notes that Ireland’s climate commitments include a 50% reduction in transport emissions within five years, relative to 2018.<\/p>\n
Chair of the alliance Dr Sean Owens, who is a GP, said that the current societal structure means that “we sit for the vast majority of the day. We sit at desks, in cars, on couches, and it’s taking its toll”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A new report has said that Ireland’s car dependent transport system is fuelling a slow-motion health and climate…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":112485,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[103,397,396,61,60],"class_list":{"0":"post-112484","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-healthcare","8":"tag-health","9":"tag-health-care","10":"tag-healthcare","11":"tag-ie","12":"tag-ireland"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/112484","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=112484"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/112484\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/112485"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=112484"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=112484"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=112484"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}