On the eve of his 60th birthday, the former executive director of the Coca-Cola company and businessman Craig Cohon (Craig Cohon) embarked on a 4,000-kilometer walk from London to Istanbul in a campaign to remove carbon.
He was in Serbia from April 15 to May 7, and today he stopped in Novi Sad on the way, where he presented innovative solutions for reducing the emission of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, which creates the greenhouse effect and contributes to global warming, in front of the Faculty of Science. reports Anatolia.
On January 3, this Canadian entrepreneur set off on foot from London on a five-month journey, during which he will cover 4,000 km across Europe, through Great Britain, France, Belgium, Germany, Poland, the Czech Republic, Austria, Slovakia, Hungary, Serbia, Bulgaria, Greece and Turkey. .
Craig says that he has been harming the environment for six decades and decided to try to offer solutions now.
“I used carbon dioxide in everything. How I flew, how I lived, the meat I ate, the iPhones I have, the shoes I have, the textiles that are made from this. So I damaged the environment without knowing that I damaged it, because there is carbon dioxide and fossil fuels in everything, and I was not aware of that. And I woke up,” says Kohon.
The latest IPCC (The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) report says there is no way to keep warming to 1.5 degrees without eliminating the carbon already in our atmosphere. It is unlikely that natural solutions alone will be sufficient. That’s why Craig Cohon joined forces with the global youth movement “ReEarth Initiative” to start a new global conversation on decarbonization. Not only has Craig invested his pension fund in decarbonising solutions, he is walking from London to Istanbul across 82 cities and towns to raise awareness of the issue.
Along the way, he walks and talks with mayors, CEOs, activists, scientists and policymakers about the opportunities and challenges of decarbonization.
“I do two things. Number one, I realized that there’s already two trillion tons of carbon dioxide in the sky since 1860. So there’s just all the CO2 that we’re taking in every day. And so, for my 9,000 tons, I put money into a new technology that will suck up carbon,” says Kohon.
In his walking escort, among other things, there is also a truck where, in an interactive way, in the trailer he presents a solution – concrete that absorbs carbon dioxide, as one of the solutions to the problem of global warming.
“I think the most important thing is to try something. Stop talking about it and do something. In Novi Sad, for example, all the new buildings being built could use concrete that actually absorbs CO2. You could take all the agricultural waste to the area north of the city , suck it up and burn it and then use that agricultural waste to suck up carbon. And then you take a CO2 credit and sell it to the European Union and make money from the EU. And that’s a good idea,” concluded Craig Kohon.
The presentation of Kohon’s solution for excess carbon was also attended by Mira Radenović, a member of the Novi Sad City Council for Environmental Protection. She emphasized that it is very important that there are actions like this and people who raise the awareness of other citizens in this way.
“It is extremely important to raise the awareness of all citizens of Serbia, but also of the whole of Europe and the world. Because the environment is something we have all borrowed from our descendants. When we talk about how much each of us, that is, as an individual, can do, perhaps it doesn’t seem like much, but if seven million of us, as many as there are, do something, i.e. awaken that awareness and cause less carbon dioxide to be produced in the environment, that is already something that is significant. And the same applies to Europe and the world “If we all work globally, then we can really make our life on planet Earth not just a burden on the environment, but we can actually live together with nature,” said Radenović.
After Novi Sad, Craig will head for Belgrade, and he should arrive in Istanbul on June 5, on his sixtieth birthday, which is also World Environment Day.
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