Blame is easy. Taking responsibility is harder. 

Fundamentally, we are moral people. We regularly ascribe value to ourselves and the world we exist within. Through shared ideas and values, we form community codes, rules, contracts, and laws to hold each other accountable for protecting what we value. When those values are violated, we seek justice on behalf of the wronged.

Expectations and rules change over time, and so does our understanding. Binary rationality results in simplistic, eye-for-an-eye forms of justice. This approach serves us for common forms of violations when two individuals are involved. You hit my car; you pay for the repairs. But when it comes to losses created by the effects of climate change, who is to blame?

Nonbinary thinking sees things as interconnected and part of a wider whole. Everything is constantly in motion, interacting with and influencing the other. The seeming independent actions of the many in similar patterns will undoubtedly create human-created systems with intended and unintended outcomes. Daily commutes in personal gasoline-powered vehicles evolved over decades, not days.

The ability to see our collective contribution to systems that don’t serve the greater good is the beginning of taking responsibility. There is no single individual or identifiable group to blame when it comes to the impacts of climate change, only our shared contribution to maintaining a broken system with costly and deadly outcomes. Recognizing integrative systems is the key to unlocking a broader moral code that seeks justice to the benefit of everyone and everything. Reimagining what we value on a global scale is how we’ll achieve a more equitable and hopeful future.