Sheller takes up the ecological emergencies and the work of rebuilding that confront the Caribbean as a whole under climate catastrophe. Her fieldwork covers reconstruction in Haiti after the earthquake, flooding along the Haitian-Dominican border, and the aftermath of recent hurricanes.

What she finds is that vulnerability and the pursuit of a just recovery cannot be separated from particular transnational arrangements, political, economic, and cultural. Foreigners generally know little about Haiti's political, cultural, and economic situation, and least of all about the part the United States has played in it, so their attempts to help frequently deepen the inequities already there.

Survival in the region, Sheller argues, will require alternatives to the neocolonialism, racial capitalism, and United States military dominance that produce what she calls the coloniality of climate. Any serious project for rebuilding, for justice, and for resilience against the climate has to be rooted in radical Caribbean intellectual traditions and their demand for deeper transformation.