Wildfires, Climate Breakdown, and the Politics of Breathing
For years now, summer in Athens has no longer arrived quietly; it announces itself through a sun dimmed by an orange haze and an atmosphere heavy with the scent of burning pine. As climate-driven wildfires sweep through the Mediterranean basin, smoke plumes originating in the surrounding mountains of Attica or the coastal pine forests near Porto Germeno spread fear, desperation, anxiety and, above all, disaster. In such recurring moments of public health crisis, the notion that air is an unclaimable, borderless commons becomes an urgent material reality. Air is our most intimate, shared infrastructure -a physical system binding every living body in a state of radical, unavoidable interdependence.
Yet, as the climate crisis deepens, the simple act of breathing is quietly being questioned. Clean air, once assumed to be an infinite, free public good, is rapidly turning into a private commodity. State responses to seasonal infernos have increasingly defaulted to automated 112 emergency alerts. These notifications urge citizens to isolate themselves, close their shutters, and seal their windows, effectively outsourcing survival to individual choices.
For inhabitants with climate-controlled apartments in leafy suburbs of the Greek capital, high-efficiency purifiers, and remote office roles, toxic air might present a manageable inconvenience. But for delivery drivers navigating congested avenues, agricultural workers, construction crews in industrial suburbs of Athens, populations living in poor conditions, and marginalized migrant communities, a burning atmosphere is an immediate hazard absorbed directly into the lungs. This disparity reveals that air is not merely an ecological medium, but a contested political arena. Just as corporate clouds monetize shared digital spaces, environmental degradation encloses the atmospheric commons, dictating who breathes safely and who carries the physical costs of ecological neglect. Reclaiming the cloud cannot remain an abstract metaphor for digital rights; it must start on the ground, with the air we inhale, establishing clean air as a collective, democratic right.
The state delegates adaptation to the citizens
When environmental collapse destabilizes urban life, public institutions increasingly rely on digital managerialism. Across Southern Europe, climate governance relies heavily on technological systems, such as automated SMS alerts, predictive wildfire indices, satellite monitoring networks like Copernicus, and heatwave forecasting algorithms. During summer heatwaves in Athens, Madrid or Marseille, citizens receive mass digital notices instructing them to shelter indoors and minimize exertion.
This reliance on top-down technocratic warnings conceals a structural failure: the state delegates adaptation to the citizen. While satellite feeds map heat vectors across the Mediterranean in real time, these systems manage symptoms rather than address underlying causes. Digital infrastructure becomes an engine of containment. It issues alerts while state-led systems -such as underfunded fire services, crumbling public water distribution, and fragile electricity grids overtaxed by private air conditioning- remain neglected. The smart city uses notifications to simulate control, framing systemic climate risk as a matter of personal precaution.
The interdependence of the commons
Wildfire smoke and urban heat stress demonstrate the limits of political borders. When pyrocumulonimbus clouds rise from burning pine forests around Attica or south-western France, fine respirable particles cross regional lines regardless of administrative jurisdictions. Smoke clouds reveal what legal boundaries obscure: air functions as an indivisible commons.
Addressing this reality requires moving from isolated personal survival toward public governance. Because air is inherently shared, digital systems, energy networks, and public health infrastructure are connected elements of the same civic foundation. A city’s capacity to endure an extreme heat event depends not on private mobile apps, but on shared resources: municipal cool zones, urban canopy restoration, open climate data, and transnational emergency coordination. Connecting digital justice to environmental protection means managing information networks and natural atmospheric systems as public goods rather than commercial assets.
Heat stress and class dynamics across Europe
Atmospheric degradation across Europe affects communities unevenly. While southern cities like Athens experience extreme Mediterranean heat directly, heatwaves in northern European capitals such as Paris, London or Brussels highlight identical structural divisions. Across these urban environments, heat stress acts along socioeconomic lines.
In densely built neighbourhoods of central Athens, like Kypseli, Koukaki or predominately working-class districts across western Athens, dense concrete construction and minimal green leafy cover create intense localized heat islands. Surface temperatures in asphalt-heavy areas remain elevated throughout the night, preventing much-needed relief. Meanwhile, service workers, logistics drivers, and municipal crews must continue physical labour through active heat warnings to keep supply chains running. At the same time, higher-income households rely on private cooling systems that exhaust additional waste heat onto city streets, further raising ambient temperatures for those outside. European climate policies expose a fundamental tension: while the atmosphere is physically universal, the resources to avoid its risks remain unequally distributed.
Policy priorities and steps ahead
Reclaiming the atmospheric commons requires constructing practical, transnational infrastructures focused on public health and environmental equity. To transform invisible digital networks into tools for democratic governance, European cities and community organizations must implement structural policies. Let us share three concrete ideas in this respect.
First, urban adaptation must prioritize physical public interventions over personal smartphone apps. Municipalities should establish expanded urban green corridors, fund systematic tree-planting programs in low-income districts, and construct accessible, public cooling facilities. Local governments must also invest in publicly owned, renewable energy grids capable of supporting municipal cooling systems without driving up carbon emissions.
Second, digital tools should be redesigned to serve public atmospheric data as an open commons. Rather than relying on proprietary software platforms, city governments and civic groups can deploy open-source, community-managed environmental sensors. Broad access to real-time microclimate and particulate data enables neighbourhood councils, labour unions, and worker collectives to enforce clear safety measures, including mandatory paid work stoppages for outdoor personnel during dangerous heat thresholds.
Third, European policy needs to integrate labour rights, digital governance, and ecological planning into a unified framework. Shared cross-border civil protection systems, open-source climate technology, and legally recognized access to clean air are essential components of a democratic commons.
Reclaiming the cloud means grounding political priorities. By rejecting the commercialization of basic life support systems and democratizing the technical infrastructures governing daily life, European communities can build resilient, equitable public spaces and start improving ways of coping with the dire consequences of climate change.
The original version of this text was published in Issue 14 of the European Alternatives Journal, in collaboration with Eteron – Institute for Research and Social Change.
