The climate politics of care practices: A conceptual and political exploration of more than human atmospheric care under conditions of air pollution

In the struggle for breathable air amid pollution and climate change, both resistance and inspiration can be found in ‘atmospheric care practices’ (Vine 2019). In this article, I embed these practices in a more than human political approach (Puig de la Bellacasa 2017), looking at the situation around Tata Steel's factory in the Netherlands as an archetypical example of atmospheric trouble.
More than human atmospheric care practices work to undo toxic harm both on a material and social level while intimately involving human beings with more than human worlds. In so doing, they are demonstrative of different kinds of agency and political activity that open up alternative ways of relating and responding to climate change.