
By the time Phil Chase is elected president, the world's climate is far on its way to irreversible change. Food scarcity, housing shortages, diminishing medical care, and vanishing species are just some of the consequences. The erratic winter the Washington, D.C., area is experiencing is another grim reminder of a global weather pattern gone haywire: bone-chilling cold one day, balmy weather the next.But the president-elect remains optimistic and doesn't intend to give up without a fight. A maverick in every sense of the word, Chase starts organizing the most ambitious plan to save the world from disaster since FDR--and assembling a team of top scientists and advisers to implement it.For Charlie Quibler, this means reentering the political fray full-time and giving up full-time care of his young son, Joe. For Frank Vanderwal, hampered by a brain injury, it means trying to protect the woman he loves from a vengeful ex and a rogue "black ops" agency not even the president can control--a task for which neither Frank's work at the National Science Foundation nor his study of Tibetan Buddhism can prepare him. In a world where time is running out as quickly as its natural resources, where surveillance is almost total and freedom nearly nonexistent, the forecast for the Chase administration looks darker each passing day. For as the last--and most terrible--of natural disasters looms on the horizon, it will take a miracle to stop the clock...
Fifty Degrees Below
Sixty Days and Counting
The first three Dune novels are particularly good. Dune has a tendency to get more philosophical in the later volumes (plans within plans within plans).
If I had to choose an all time favorite I would probably go with Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy (Red/Green/Blue Mars). An extremely well researched view of how Mars colonization and terraforming might proceed in a realistic way.
He also has a trilogy on the possible/likely consequences of runaway global warming (Forty Signs of Rain, Fifty Degrees Below, Sixty Days and Counting) but RGB Mars is definitely better.
Edit: "The content of Green Mars and the cover artwork for Red Mars are included on the Phoenix DVD, carried onboard Phoenix, a NASA lander that successfully touched down on Mars in May 2008. The First Interplanetary Library is intended to be a sort of time capsule for future Mars explorers and colonists." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_trilogy#On_Phoenix_spacecr...
