Hugh Helferty appears in The Globe and Mail‘s Letters to the Editor, expressing the need for a Carbon Takeback Obligation.

Government should use regulation to require oil and gas companies to find solutions.

It should establish a requirement that any oil and gas produced needs to be offset by sequestering an equivalent amount of carbon. Phased in over time, such a standard should meet a deadline of net zero emissions by 2050. Failure to comply should result initially in financial penalties, then ultimately in loss of rights to produce Canadian oil and gas.

This would unleash the innovative capacity of the industry, motivating companies to focus resources on developing technologies needed to comply. New approaches would emerge, including carbon capture and storage, as well as the sequestration of carbon within products such as plastics and cement.

The current pace of industry efforts to cut emissions is nowhere near what is required. Companies have the capability to change the pace of climate change. It’s time to put them to work.

Read in The Globe and Mail here.