Rage at politicians, corporations, and powerful entities who prioritize profit over planetary health.

Lena stood at the edge of the forest she had grown up exploring, the crisp mountain air replaced by thick smoke. Her little brother, Sam, clutched her hand, his face half-hidden behind a reusable cloth mask-decorated with cartoon trees that were now burning.

“They said it’s under control,” he whispered.

She didn’t answer.

She couldn’t.

How do you explain to a child that “they” have been saying that for decades?

That “under control” is just a political phrase now, a bandage slapped on the gaping wound of a dying world.


Lena was 19 and angry. Not the social media kind of angry, not performative hashtags or filtered eco-aesthetic angry. Her anger simmered, real, raw, and relentless.

It pulsed in her veins when she saw images of oil spills and deforested land. It surged in her chest when billionaires launched rockets for fun while the oceans choked on plastic and people in her town drank bottled water because the tap wasn’t safe anymore.

But the thing that tore at her most-what clawed at her gut every single night-was how nobody seemed to care enough to change.

Not really.

Not her father, who chuckled every time she tried to bring up carbon emissions. “We’ve always had hot summers, Lena,” he’d say, popping a beer, “you’re just too sensitive.”

Not her aunt, who mocked her bamboo toothbrush and called her a “hippie freak” at family dinners.

And certainly not the politicians on TV, who spoke of climate like it was a distant, polite topic, not an emergency. They smiled while forests burned, ice melted, and futures collapsed.


Lena tried. God, she tried.

She organized local cleanups. She switched to a plant-based diet. She cycled everywhere, avoided fast fashion, reused, recycled, reduced. But still-her hometown was on fire. Again.

Sam’s school was closed for the third time this year due to “smoke risk.” He was only seven, and already knew how to pack a “go-bag.”

Last night, she had cried quietly into her pillow while he slept beside her. The guilt was suffocating.

I should’ve done more.

I should’ve screamed louder.

Why didn’t I chain myself to something? March more?

But the real fear, the one that kept her up, was this:

What if it doesn’t matter?



That morning, she had opened her phone and found a new video trending. Some politician was laughing about climate activists. Again. Calling them “emotional kids” who “don’t understand the economy.”

Her hands trembled.

The economy?

What use is an economy if there’s no air to breathe?



Later, they went to her grandfather’s house, a safer area upwind from the fires. As they sat around the dinner table, the conversation turned, as it often did, to “back in my day.”

Her grandfather, a retired farmer with sun-wrinkled skin, gestured with a spoon.

“Lena, I’m proud of you for caring. But the world isn’t going to change because of your composting. We’ve got bigger fish to fry.”

Lena bit her lip.

“Maybe,” she said quietly, “we’re out of fish because everyone just kept saying that.”

The room went quiet. Her father cleared his throat.

“Don’t talk to your grandfather like that.”

She stood up.

“I’m not being disrespectful. I’m just tired of pretending this isn’t a crisis. That it’s not your generation that burned through all the resources. That we’re the ones being ‘dramatic’ when we’re just trying to survive what you left us.”

Her voice cracked.

Sam looked up at her, wide-eyed.

Her mom sighed. “This again?”

“Yes,” Lena said. “This again. Because I can’t go a single day without thinking about the end of the world. I have nightmares about rising seas and burning skies. I panic when I see a single-use plastic bottle. I cry when I read climate reports. And you all just... act like it’s not happening.”

Her fists were clenched. Her chest heaved.

She didn’t mean to explode. But it was too much. It had always been too much.

“You get to be nostalgic,” she said through tears, “because your childhood wasn’t on fire.”


Later that night, her grandfather knocked gently on her door. He entered slowly, holding something in his hand: an old photo album. Pictures of his farm, from decades ago. Green fields. Bees. Wildflowers. Clean rivers.

“I didn’t know,” he said quietly. “Not really. We weren’t taught. We thought progress meant machines, fuel, bigger harvests, more comfort.”

He sat down beside her, flipping a page.

“I thought I was building something for you. A better world. I didn’t see what we were breaking.”

Lena cried again. This time, not out of anger. But grief. And something softer, quieter-shared sorrow.

The next week, the fire reached the town outskirts. Lena and her family evacuated. Again.

Sam clutched her hand tightly in the car, eyes wide with fear as flames glowed on the horizon.

“I’m scared,” he whispered.

“So am I,” she said. “But we’re still here. And I’m still fighting.”


At the evacuation center, Lena met other climate activists. Young, tired, determined faces. They held each other. They planned. They cried. They rebuilt.

They shared stories of anger—at the inaction, at the betrayals, at the silence.

But they also shared hope.

Because despite everything, they cared. And caring, they realized, was radical.


Months later, Lena stood on a makeshift stage at a youth climate rally. Her voice echoed through the megaphone.

“They called us emotional. They called us dramatic. But we are not weak. We are witnesses. Witnesses to the destruction. Survivors of the consequences. Warriors for the future.”

She raised her fist.

“We are not the generation of doom—we are the generation of change.”

Sam was in the crowd, holding a cardboard sign that read:

“I Deserve a Future.”


And Lena knew, no matter how powerless she felt, no matter how big the problem was, she would never stop fighting.

Because rage, when guided by love, was a fire that could not be extinguished.

And maybe-just maybe-hat fire could light the way.