(Not sure I agree with the headline, but I've read some of these and they are nifty tales anyways.)
1. No Blade of Grass
The British tradition of a "cozy catastrophe" was gobsmacked by John Christopher's 1956 novel, whose original title, The Death of Grass, spells out its simple yet impactful conceit. A mutant virus wipes out mankind's most essential crops, plunging the world into hungry chaos. Christopher—best remembered today for his YA novels—charts the consequences of this single disaster with utmost pragmatism, brutality and cynicism. (The British government's solution to starving millions of its own populace is a massive bomb attack.) Vulnerable monoculture of important staples is a relatively overlooked problem today. Despite the recent establishment of the Svalbard Global Seed Vault in Norway, and the advances in defensive genetic engineering since Christopher's day, this novel's depiction of an imminent threat still rings true.
2. The Drowned World
J.G. Ballard's second novel, from 1962, brought him fame, money and a chance to abandon his day job. For us, his readers, it provides a roadmap that might prove increasingly valuable and that some actual experts are reluctantly starting to endorse: If you can't beat the eco-apocalypse, learn to love it. On a scientific expedition to drowned London from the polar redoubt where our species huddles, Ballard's antihero, Robert Kerans, begins a psychic voyage through "deep time," back to the Triassic past. Hothouse Earth becomes a strange new womb that will incubate a modified type of human fit for the tropical planet. Adding in a pirate named Strangman and his flock of pet crocodiles, as well as a femme fatale named Beatrice Dahl, results in a droll parody of Peter Pan for the end times.
3. Make Room! Make Room!
Famously filmed as Soylent Green (1973), and in the process simplified and diminished, this Harry Harrison novel from 1966 remains a much savvier take on an environmental problem little discussed today: overpopulation. Once the bete noir of all eco-activists and SF writers—Isaac Asimov in particular harped on the theme in several essays—this core topic has been slighted of late, for reasons of political correctness and because some countries, such as Russia and Italy, are actually losing population. But the fact of the planet's finite and overstressed carrying capacity remains. Harrison dramatizes this issue with sweaty closeups of average folks, and a cop protagonist investigating a murder. It's like riding the Tokyo subways at rush hour, forced to confront the stink of your fellow primates.
4. The Sheep Look Up
Unremittingly savage and accusatory, this 1972 John Brunner book might be seen as an amping-up of the Harrison title. In a world rife with new diseases, commercial scams masquerading as organic remedies and a dog-eat-dog cast of characters, Brunner's novel takes us to the open sewer we've collectively created and pushes our faces into it. The one good man, messiah Austin Train, is disillusioned and betrayed, his creed warped by his followers to violent acts. Neglected for some time, this novel has lately experienced a resurgence, with no less a figure than William Gibson calling it a prophetic depiction of our present day.
5. Science in the Capital Trilogy
Kim Stanley Robinson's three novels—Forty Signs of Rain (2004), Fifty Degrees Below (2005) and Sixty Days and Counting (2007)—exhibit the same passionate convictions, political acumen and, at times, wonky attention to detail that his Mars books did. Populated by bureaucrats and scientists, these books convey the nitty-gritty minute-by-minute reality of our climate-change problems. We initially leap to the day after tomorrow, when melting polar ice caps result in a flooded Washington D.C. Then comes the threat of a shifting Gulf Stream that will render the U.K. and Europe a giant walk-in freezer. Finally, the whole human race is forced to confront the possibility of its own self-engineered extinction. "Mundane" SF with a sense of wonder, this series constitutes what critic Gavin Grant calls "a map to a better future."
http://www.scifi.com/sfw/books/sfw18803.html
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