Two international conferences on carbon removal (as negative emissions) were held in 2018. The first in Gothenburg, 22-24 May; the second, in Canberra, 30-31 October. Whilst separately organized, both attempted comprehensive science responses to crucial climate change questions: what contribution, together and on their own, could different CO2 removal techniques make towards the goals of the Paris agreement? what are the potential pitfalls, technical and political, of such approaches? and what else do we need to know? Whilst the Gothenburg event provided a much greater number of presentations (over 140), the structuring of parallel sessions meant that, unfortunately, most had to be missed by any single conference delegate. The Canberra meeting, “Integrating Industry, Technology and Society for Carbon Drawdown” avoided that problem: all 25 talks were in plenary sessions – and are now online. They included several analyses of land- and ocean-based ‘natural’ solutions, by both Australian and European researchers, and a sobering scenario (by Will Steffen, ANU) of how close we might already be to climate catastrophe. A conference communique has since been issued, targeted at Australian government departments and identifying opportunities for carbon removal at the national level. Phil Williamson gave one of the keynote talks at the conference, and participated in the subsequent briefing with the Australian Department of the Environment and Energy.