6 Novels to Scare You Into Celebrating Earth Day

Odds Against Tomorrow, by Nathaniel Rich
Published just months after Hurricane Sandy devastated the eastern seaboard, Odds Against Tomorrow is a frighteningly familiar read. Mitchell Zukor is a young mathematician who joins a hyper-advanced financial consulting company called FutureWorld. His job is to calculate disaster scenarios—earthquakes, financial crises, war, catastrophic climate change—that the company then sells to corporations so that they can indemnify themselves. When one of his scenarios comes true, people begin to turn to him as a prophet, forcing him into a new and uncertain world.

Flight Behavior, by Barbara Kingsolver
Kingsolver goes beyond the cold facts of climate change in this 2012 novel about an unhappy Tennessee farm wife who stumbles upon what appears to be a lake of fire glowing in the forest (it’s actually a huge group of monarch butterflies, driven from their habitat by pollution and now facing extinction in Tennessee). She sees it as a miracle, but those who descend upon the tiny rural community have other ideas. Instead of simply focusing on the science or the warnings, Flight Behavior is a beautifully holistic look at what living in an increasingly unpredictable climate can mean: financially, socially, politically, even religiously.

Arctic Rising, by Tobias S. Buckell
The Arctic ice cap has melted, and there’s a lot of unclaimed, newly accessible oil up for grabs, sending the international community into a chaotic free-for-all, with countries all hoping to come out on top. When she records a radiation signal, airship pilot Anika Duncan of the United Nations Polar Guard finds herself right in the middle of a hunt for a stolen nuclear weapon and a global power struggle between corporations, militaries, and environmentalists. An exciting read that both entertains and challenges.

Forty Signs of Rain, by Kim Stanley Robinson
Forty Signs of Rain is especially terrifying because it’s so very, very possible. Set in a near-future where a polar ice chunk has broken off and interrupted the Atlantic current, Robinson’s novel doesn’t deal so much with the thrilling drama of enormous storms and natural catastrophes as it does the day-to-day struggles of the bureaucrats, scientists, and politicians who have to deal with the fallout. As the world plunges toward a new ice age, D.C. melts beneath record-breaking heat, and nations are overtaken by rising sea levels, our protagonists struggle to bring about desperately needed change. Forty Signs of Rain is the first novel in Robinson’s Science in the Capital trilogy.

The Sea and Summer, by George Turner
A winner of the Arthur C. Clarke Award, The Sea and Summer is the near-future tale of a world racked by rising temperatures, rising sea levels, and rising inequality. The book follows the Conways, a family who were once “Sweet,” meaning employed, and have now become “Swill,” meaning part of the 90 percent of the population who rely on government assistance to survive and whose homes are now sinking beneath the rising water.

The Water Knife, by Paolo Bacigalupi
Bacigalupi is a cli-fi darling, and his latest novel promises to deliver a thrilling look at a drought-ridden near-future where water is more precious than gems and the Southwestern United States is locked in a fight over resources that mirrors…well, that mirrors its current fight over resources. Angel Velasquez is a “water knife,” a person whose job is to ensure his boss has enough water for her luxurious developments, even if that means cutting off entire cities from their supply. When he hears whispers about a new water source in Phoenix, he’s plunged into a violent and tangled struggle for power.