This article looks at the current state of carbon removal approaches and some of the politics that surround them. It outlines what carbon removal is, charts some of the major challenges and controversies, and sketches some of the work needed to ensure that carbon removal developments are attentive to environmental sustainability and social justice. It also examines some of the major carbon removal options that are either in development or in discussion, starting with biological approaches and then looking at engineered options.

Without deep transformations in the economy that go beyond incremental gains in decarbonization, we remain on course for catastrophic global heating. Some businesses have pledged to go carbon-neutral, carbon-trading schemes are expanding, and a growing divestment movement has pressured investment funds to shun fossil fuel producers. But financial forces are also part of the problem, still driving more production and consumption of fossil fuels. Achieving transformational shifts in finance, production, and governance calls for a more disruptive politics underpinned by shifts in power relations.

Agriculture systems, which account for a sizable share of global greenhouse gas emissions, are placing a growing burden on the environment while also contributing to increasingly common health problems. Climate change is making the situation worse by reducing agricultural productivity as well as the nutritional content of certain crops, which in turn is driving intensified production to meet global food demand. To break out of this potentially catastrophic feedback loop, societies must realign agricultural policies, financial incentives, and diets to promote health and environmental sustainability.

This essay examines the everyday inequalities, stigmas, and injustices that leave people with disabilities highly vulnerable to escalating climate change risks. It argues that including people with disabilities in disaster risk reduction processes is essential to shaping inclusive, effective policies and practices. Examples of several programs that have done so are discussed. Focusing on the strengths of people with disabilities as resilient change-makers and as the experts in their own lives—instead of viewing them as dependent on others—can lead to the changes necessary to recognize their personal sovereignty and deliver disaster justice. Third in a series on disability rights around the world .

A widespread failure to recognize the social and political-economic causes of climate-related crises is an erasure of history that hides potential solutions and absolves guilty parties of responsibility. This blocking out of causality is perpetuating slow and silent violence against present and future generations. These erasures are illustrated by two short cases: the causes of famine and dislocation in the Sahel, and the causes of farmers’ suicides in India. The essay highlights the need to recognize histories of exploitation, and introduces the “Exploiter Pays Principle,” in order to deliver justice in climate policymaking.

A new book addresses the political, moral, and strategic questions raised by acts of property destruction aimed at curbing the use of fossil fuels. The book argues that the magnitude of the climate crisis requires more confrontational methods to force necessary changes. The review considers these arguments in light of previous examples of environmental radicalism.

Excerpts from a Current History essay published two decades ago.

While often treated separately, biodiversity loss and climate change are related and mutually reinforcing problems. Rising temperatures and other climate impacts have seriously altered the composition, function, and structure of many ecosystems and species, some irreversibly. Policies to tackle both problems are clearly needed, but siloed approaches continue to dominate proposed solutions. There are also risks that some climate policies, such as the expansion of afforestation or bioenergy, will have increasingly negative risks on biodiversity. Integrated, innovative, and urgent solutions are needed in order to fulfill increasing calls for transformative change in how we live with nature.

How have Central Asians built livelihoods amidst economic hardship and political dysfunction during three decades of post-Soviet independence? Local leaders are mobilizing people, resources—and, importantly, trust—to enable entire communities to prosper. These nonstate figures are increasingly consequential, but their model of paternalistic patronage may not represent what all Central Asians want.

Despite Russia’s history of state surveillance of activists and civil society, both in the Soviet era and after, people with disabilities have found ways to challenge their living conditions and push for change. Through a variety of grassroots tactics, they have historically been active participants in society. Disability rights activists have developed an expansive repertoire of activist engagements (including online) that transcend the boundaries of familiar models of overt protest, dissent, and confrontation typical of disabled activists in Western democratic countries.

Churches and other faith-based communities have taken the lead in the human rights sector in Russia. At a time when many secular activists have been harassed, imprisoned, forced into exile, and even murdered, interfaith partnerships working on civil rights for minorities and migrants have been tolerated and officially recognized. Part of a long history of civic–oriented religious activism, they benefit from their legacy as moral leaders. While some religious activists have publicly challenged the Russian state’s authority and values, most have been careful to present themselves as partners of the state, even if their beliefs are not always fully aligned.

Alexei Navalny has been the most prominent campaigner against Russia’s massive oil-fueled corruption, reaching millions of viewers with witty video exposés. Now imprisoned in a penal colony after returning to Moscow following his recovery from a poisoning, he has made his own bodily suffering a potent symbol of protest, tapping into a deep Russian tradition of dissent.

In authoritarian countries, jokes can allow citizens to mock the system’s absurdities, but they also reinforce the boundaries of speech and thought. A study of humor in Belarus puts the country’s current protests in a new light, just as the old quiescent mentality may be changing.

Unlike in the Baltics, support for independence in Moldova was relatively low among the political elites and the general population when the Soviet Union collapsed. In the 1990s, the political parties in power pursued an incoherent program, as governments swung between reformist and conservative agendas. Economic crises and systemic corruption depleted citizens’ trust in politicians and state institutions. This low institutional trust has hampered governance at all levels, and primarily in crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Minsk Group, led by the United States, France, and Russia, has brokered the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict since the mid-1990s after Armenia-backed secessionists in the unrecognized Nagorno-Karabakh Republic won the first Karabakh war of 1992–94. That mediation embodied the ideals of the mid-1990s unipolar moment, which assumed that liberalized markets and democratic transitions would converge internally to resolve legacy conflicts in postsocialist states while bringing them into convergence externally with Euro-Atlantic nations. Those assumptions withered away over the next quarter-century. Neither Azerbaijan nor Armenia transitioned to liberal democracy. Backed by an increasingly assertive Turkey, Azerbaijan prevailed in a bloody war in 2020. This time, the regional authoritarian powers, Russia and Turkey, are overseeing what could be a test case for a new form of “illiberal peace.”

Financial innovations stemming from the digital economy have transformed Indonesians’ everyday lives. “Superapps” offering ride sharing and an array of other services have delivered many conveniences to consumers, while also trapping many in cycles of debt. The state has responded with little more than public awareness campaigns, urging consumers to develop their own digital literacy to avoid scams. Corruption at the state level, meanwhile, remains pervasive, as shown by scandals exposed by the COVID-19 pandemic. Construction of a new capital city will be another test of financial transparency.

Military-run business activities can turn into an unrestrained form of parasitic capitalism, preying on national economies. The militaries of Thailand and Myanmar have evolved as predatory “khaki capitalist” institutions. Thailand’s military, deriving its legitimacy as guardian of the monarchy, has used that role to justify its accumulation of economic resources. Myanmar’s military, in power for most of the decades since independence, has invoked national security to expand its budget and business interests. Both militaries have repeatedly employed coups to consolidate their economic power, most recently in 2014 in Thailand and 2021 in Myanmar. Fragile democratic governments and international sanctions have proved ineffective in restraining them.

The Chinese government has downgraded use of the Mongol language in schools in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, and is now using its brand of state environmentalism to rein in Mongol pastoralists, blaming them for the degradation of grasslands. By targeting language and land use, the two pillars of Mongol autonomy, the state has shown that it is prepared to override the very limited forms of autonomy still enjoyed by China’s minority nationalities. Mongol leaders are responding by working within the state and its discourses to preserve pastoralism, casting herders not as keepers of a timeless nomadic culture but as partners in preserving biodiversity and stemming desertification.

Long considered objects of pity and welfare assistance, people with disabilities in South Korea and Japan are increasingly treated as rights-bearers. Through activism, litigation, and involvement in international treaty negotiations, Koreans and Japanese with disabilities spurred reforms that created new anti-discrimination protections and obligations to provide reasonable accommodations, access, employment, and social supports. These policy changes also signal a notably more legalistic approach to governance, particularly in South Korea, because they include more detailed rules and formal rights, more enforcement mechanisms like fines, and better recourse to judicial or other dispute resolution bodies.

As post-growth Japan hesitates between stagnation and change, its young people are opting out of traditional career paths and seeking lifestyles with greater personal freedom. The COVID-19 pandemic has forced Japanese society to change in some respects, but institutional and corporate leaders remain reluctant to embrace reforms to work and gender norms and in many other areas. Yet social changes are occurring at the grassroots level, as younger Japanese pursuing new opportunities are moving from cities to the countryside, others head overseas in pursuit of more diverse careers and living arrangements, and some among the growing ranks of social introverts turn themselves into successful game developers and writers.