Unalienating Carbon: Affect and Labour in Artisanal Carbon Removal Work

Carbon is rapidly undergoing a joint technological and cultural transformation. With the prolific rise of carbon dioxide removal in the climate pathways and net zero commitments that contour wider energy transitions, carbon emissions are increasingly positioned not just as future actions to be avoided, but as an already existing material sink newly opened to technical intervention and marketization. While climate models contemplate industrial-scale carbon removal technologies by the end of the century, carbon removal is currently characterized by small-scale, agricultural work: regenerative farming and biochar production. This article focuses on these forms of artisanal carbon removal, analyzing how its workers develop a unique experience of what is otherwise an invisible object of social anxiety: for them, carbon is an object of their labour, transformed through work into newly sensory and reparative forms. The narratives and affects of small-scale carbon removal work, accordingly, present a significant departure from the usual frames of climate and energy politics, offering rare possibilities for hope, regeneration, and relational capacities for direct and tangible action. Drawing on documentary media about and by regenerative agriculture and biochar practitioners, this article explores how such unalienated affects may culminate in new orientations for climate communication and politics.