Will the Flower Slip Through the Asphalt: Writers Respond to Capitalist Climate Change

With the earth and its inhabitants under more pressure than ever before, and with bona fide climate change deniers in the most powerful positions on the planet, reading this book is essential. It informs and inspires the actions that we all need to take to protect ourselves and our homes. Read it, and after you’ve wept, act. — Emma Thompson, Actor

Naomi Klein, delivering the Edward Said lecture, links the question of climate with the question of occupation (with Palestine as the focus). Klein points out that those who are ‘othered’ will be the first victims of the climate catastrophe. This volume collects Naomi Klein’s superb essay, along with reactions from important writers who live across the globe.

John Bellamy Foster and Ghassan Hage offer direct reflections on Klein’s lecture, while other writers are spurred by Klein’s insights. Rafia Zakaria takes us to the shoreline of Karachi, Masturah Alatas wonders about hijab and air-conditioning in Malaysia, Shalini Singh meanders through the climate wars in India, and Susan Abulhawa writes from the ‘fossil fuel sacrifice zone’ at Standing Rock (North Dakota, USA).  The book closes with Amitav Ghosh’s meditation on nutmeg and cloves, leading to important insights into globalization, interconnectedness and transformation.

The main theoretical achievement of Will the Flower Slip Through the Asphalt is that it reveals how global climate change is organically connected to the global capitalist economy and thus to the manifold social tensions and inequalities of our world.