Marek Oziewicz

Beyond the Accountability Paradox: Climate Guilt and the Systemic Drivers of Climate Change

About the author

Marek Oziewicz [oz-YE-vige] is a Polish-born comparative literature scholar and theorist of story systems. Marek is Professor of Literacy Education and holds the Sidney and Marguerite Henry Professorship of Children’s and Young Adult Literature at the University of Minnesota. He also serves as Director of the Center for Climate Literacy. Dr. Oziewicz studies the Anthropocene as a challenge to our story systems and coordinates international efforts to design universal climate literacy education. He is the Senior Editor of Climate Literacy in Education and Editor-in-Chief of Climate Lit: a resource hub for teaching climate literacy with children’s literature and media. His recent publications include “The Climate Literacy Revolution” in The Ecological Citizen (2024), book chapters in Pedagogy in the Anthropocene (2022), Literature as a Lens for Climate Change (2022), and Youth Created Media on the Climate Crisis (2023), a collection Fantasy and Myth in the Anthropocene (2022), and a special issue of The Lion and the Unicorn on Children’s Literature and Climate Change (2021).

Chapter summary

Have you ever heard people saying that we're all to blame for the climate catastrophe? Have you ever wondered if our collective inability to act in the face of accelerating destruction reflects some basic truth of "human nature"? And have you ever anguished over the possibility that—despite all our advanced science and technology—we're doomed to be the agents of our own destruction? If you've grappled with any of these notions, you have already encountered the accountability paradox.

The accountability paradox is a state of mental confusion, manufactured by the dominant public discourse about climate change, in which we are manipulated to internalize the climate emergency as everyone's fault or nobody's fault. Both conclusions are pieces of false consciousness that effectively lock us in a state of climate guilt. Both are strategies through which the late-petrocapitalist system unloads the responsibility for its ecocidal operations on its victims, making us feel complicit and powerless to change the system that is killing the planet.

This chapter offers two classroom activities I developed to help students understand the accountability paradox and navigate past the feelings of guilt it generates. My argument is that climate guilt is a serious obstacle to meaningful climate action and that helping students overcome it requires conversations about the systemic drivers of climate change.

Excepts from the chapter

Climate guilt appears to be a generation-specific phenomenon that transcends identity politics and emerges as a first-order emotional response to learning about the systemic drivers of climate change. 

While students have a better grasp of the systemic drivers of climate change than they realize—i.e., they recognize that the assault on the biosphere is a direct consequence of our current economic mode through which we organize the planet’s resources, production, and distribution—they nevertheless tend to misattribute blame for this systemic outcome to people in general or human nature in particular.

Deflection refers to strategies adopted by the petronormative institutions whose operations are the systemic drivers of climate change to project the responsibility for the destruction on individual consumers. In all its forms, deflection is aimed to blame individual consumers rather than corporate actors, emphasize individual responsibility over corporate culpability, personal change over systemic change, individual action over collective action, personal choice over government regulations.

Students who believe that destruction is our “nature” tend to be resigned and unable to appreciate that a genuine social transformation is possible. My role is to help them understand that one of the key rhetorical strategies of the ecocidal status quo in which we live is to naturalize capitalism as a system of relations that reflect human nature.

Sample activity with questions

The alien ultimatum questionnaire discussion is an example of EFT (episodic future thinking) activity that can be completed in class in about 50 min. I designed it to tease out students' ideas about the systemic drivers of climate change, which I then put side by side with the students’ articulations of climate guilt. This activity can be done through a google form or on paper.

1. Ask students to consider the following hypothetical story (include in the questionnaire or/and project on screen): 

The Guests arrived in 20xx [use the “immediate future” year]. It was like the Second Coming. Just not what anyone expected. Armed with evidence they had collected on humanity’s reckless destruction of the biosphere, they came to salvage whatever life remained. Except for humans.

Unable to eliminate or ignore them, the Earth’s leaders begged for another chance. The Guests considered. A highly advanced species who have long acted as gardeners of life in other galaxies, they unexpectedly gave us 12 months. 12 months to reshape our global civilization: our political institutions, social organization, and dominant technologies. Unless we make it sustainable—environmentally, politically, and economically—in 12 months they will start draining the planet’s water. They will also relocate all surviving life forms. Except for humans.

2. Give students 20 to 30 min to answer to following questions:

  • “Would we be able to change our ways?”

  • “Would governments, banks and corporations be motivated to re-channel their resources into creating a sustainable global order?”

  • “Do you believe that we can save the planet and create a future for your grandchildren that's worth living for?”

  • “Are sustainable technologies, energy and progress possible?”

  • “What do we need to do to make them a reality?”

For all questions, possible answers include “yes,” “no,” and “it’s complicated.” You may follow each question with an optional prompt: “In one sentence, explain your choice above.”

3. If you are able to show collective results, start with one or two on screen. Invite students to share their thoughts and explain their reasoning. Look for bigger trends or answers that contradict one another. For example, ask students to compare the two pie charts below:

This activity helps students confront their deeply held convictions and beliefs about the climate emergency with their own sense of agency, climate guilt, and responsibility.

Sample of student ideas

(in response to: what should we do to achieve sustainability?)

"The mindset of humanity must change from only trying to benefit themselves and maybe their children to one where the goal of everyone is to help everyone currently and in the future."

"I think we should make it our number one mission to stop the escalation of climate change and it should be the most important thing we focus on. That included political leaders, business owners, and just everyday people."

"Inform all people because people do not believe the urgency of the situation and if they knew exactly what we were doing, perhaps more people would want to change their way of life and try to save the planet."

"I think that people need to exert strong and consistent pressure on their governments. Right now, the powers that be see climate change as just a political platform. They promise they care in order to get votes, but when it comes down to it, they don't actually do anything. We need radical thinkers that are willing to make the changes needed to save our planet, even if it means some people won't be happy about it."

Additional resources

Brulle, Robert J. and Kari Marie Norgaard. 2019. “Avoiding cultural trauma: climate change and social inertia.” Environmental Politics 28.5: 886-908, DOI: 10.1080/09644016.2018.1562138.

McKibben, Bill. 2021. “Climate Anxiety Makes Good Sense,” The New Yorker, May 5.

Hiser, Krista K. and Matthew K. Lynch. 2021. “Worry and Hope: What College Students Know, Think, Feel, and Do about Climate Change.” Journal of Community Engagement and Scholarship, 13.3.

Oziewicz, Marek. 2023. “The CLICK Framework,” Climate Literacy in Education 1.2: pp TBD.

Oziewicz, Marek. 2024. “The Climate Literacy Revolution,” Ecological Citizen 7.1: 16–23.

Supran, Geoffrey and Naomi Oreskes. 2021. “Rhetoric and frame analysis of ExxonMobil’s climate change communications,” One Earth 4: 696–719.

Timperley, Jocelyn. 2020. “Who is really to blame for climate change?” BBC Future, 18th June 2020.

Link to the Center for Climate Literacy: https://climateliteracy.umn.edu/.

Contact details

Marek speaks to live audiences, facilitates workshops, and offers coaching for groups and organizations. You can reach him at this email address.