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The Carbon Diaries 2015
Saci Lloyd 
YA Fiction
The UK is the first nation to introduce carbon dioxide rations, in a drastic bid to cut greenhouse gas emissions. As her family spirals rapidly out of control, Laura Brown chronicles the first year of rationing with scathing abandon. Will her mother become one with her inner wolf? Does her father love the pig more than her? Can her band Dirty Angels make it big? And most importantly, will Ravi Datta ever love her?
The Carbon Diaries 2015 is one girl’s drastic bid to stay sane in a world unravelling at the seams.
This is a lot of fun, but a serious message – a brilliant read.
Make Room! Make Room!
Harry Harrison 
Adult Fiction
The planet’s population has exploded, and resources are stretched to breaking point. The starving billions live on lentils, soya beans, and – if they’re lucky – the odd rat. In sweltering, overcrowded New York, a police detective is engaged in a desperate, lonely hunt for a killer everyone has forgotten…
Originally published in 1966, this novel was adapted to make the 1973 cult film Soylent Green.
A nightmarish vision of a world in meltdown – and a cautionary tale of what might happen if Western consumption goes unchecked.
Parable of the Sower
Octavia E. Butler 
Adult Fiction
Los Angeles, 2024: global warming has brought drought and rising seawater, and resources are scarce… America is becoming a place of chaos, where violence rules and only the rich and powerful are safe. Lauren, a young woman with extraordinary powers of empathy, records this broken world in her journal until, one terrible night, everything alters beyond recognition, and she must make her voice heard for the sake of those she loves…Her vision becomes reality and her dreams of a better way to live gain the power to change humanity forever.
First published in 1993, Parable of the Sower is eerily prescient in many ways.
The Death of Grass
John Christopher 
Adult Fiction
A gripping psychological thriller as well as a post-apocalyptic vision of the world pushed to the brink by famine because of a virus that is wiping out staple crops such as rice and wheat. A counter-virus is expected any day, but it turns out that the governments have been lying to their people – and when the deadly disease hits the UK, society rapidly descends into barbarism.
The Death of Grass might seem a bit dated – it was first published in 1956 – but this bleak, thought provoking account of the psychology of survival is well worth reading.
Life as We Knew It
Susan Beth Pfeffer 
YA Fiction
When a meteor knocks the moon closer to earth, the result is catastrophic. Worldwide tsunamis wipe out the coasts, earthquakes rock the continents, and volcanic ash blocks out the sun. As society breaks down, American teenager Miranda and her family learn to subsist on stockpiled food, with limited water and heat.
Told in a year’s worth of diary entries, Life as We Knew It chronicles the human struggle to hold onto the most important resource of all – hope – in an increasingly desperate and unfamiliar world.