"Two Degrees" by Alan Gratz, List 6

They were spooked so badly that Akira knew there was no way she could steer either of them calmly through the inferno.

Her house was on fire! She felt herself starting to hyperventilate, and she fought down the terror that was threatening to swallow her.

Akira heard something thrumming above the roar and crackle of the wildfire, and she looked up. Against the smoky, moonlit sky, she saw a big two-rotor helicopter.

His breath sounded heavy and labored, but Nanuq was alive.

Every part of Miami had been underwater during the hurricane. But most of Liberty City was a few feet higher than a lot of the other neighborhoods, which meant that as the water slowly receded, Liberty City emerged like an island from Lake Miami.

Churro rode like a king in a palanquin in the kayak as Patience and Natalie carried it between them, picking their way through downed trees and overturned cars and unidentifiable debris.

Natalie frowned. Who did she know that was going to go looting stores? She nodded anyway and hurried back the way she’d come, completely rattled.

Patience scoffed. “Yeah, I heard. But they’re not the army or the National Guard, and they’re not the police. Vigilantes is what they are,” she said.

The news station had seen what was going on in the Brother’s Keeper parking lot while flying drones over the city...

...Miami’s famous meteorologist had come by motorboat to Liberty Island to talk to everyone.

“The trees that died were thousands of years old. If these trees can burn — trees that are built to survive wildfires — how much more vulnerable are we?”

On the screen, a boy from Switzerland named Wolfgang was showing pictures of the ancient artifacts he’d found when a ten-thousand-year-old glacier melted near his house in the mountains.

The next person to Zoom in, a boy named Chetachukwu, told a sadder story about how desertification in northeast Nigeria had caused a famine, and Akira stood rapt as he explained how starvation was forcing boys like him to become child soldiers.

"...Tell your city council you want more parks and less concrete. Tell your state government to require solar panels on new houses, and to install charging stations for electric cars at rest areas. Tell the federal government to stop giving subsidies to fossil fuel companies and to give that money and those tax breaks to renewable energy instead. To really move the needle on climate change, it’s going to take all of us — including our government.”

Nine months ago, standing in the parking lot of Brother’s Keeper with Patience and Maria Martinez, a Kids Against Climate Change rally had just been an inkling of an idea. Now here it was, a full-blown reality.