Last summer I had a bitter thought as I looked at a photograph of a mother, father, and child in brightly colored clothes wading with their belongings through waste-colored floodwaters in Jamshoro, Pakistan. I thought, My trip to Hawaii contributed to this catastrophe. I am partly responsible. The jet fuel I purchased along with a United Airlines seat helped pay for the monsoons that inundated Pakistan.

Of course I’m familiar that popular image of the “web of life” and how everything is connected within it. But suddenly the influences, causes, and effects of life looked less like a “web” than a metal pail left out in a rainstorm. One single raindrop doesn’t “cause” the pail to fill to overflow, but it certainly contributes. And so it is with climate change. Day by day, minute by minute, so many millions of us make it worse.

“I’m sorry,” I said to the family in the photograph. I’m sorry not just in the way of apologizing for something I’ve done, but also in the way of regret. I am sorry that my grandchildren’s children, if they dare to have them, will probably live under very difficult conditions. I’m sorry that tree swallows are breeding earlier, because spring arrives sooner and that many of their chicks are dying, because uneven temperatures mean there aren’t enough insects for them to eat. I’m sorry that millions of people around the world don’t have, and won’t have, enough water and that others, like that family, will be driven from their homes by flood. I’m sorry the hemlocks are dying. I’m sorry the honeybees are dying. I’m sorry the Colorado River is dying.

The importance of owning up to our mistakes is a central part of almost all religions. Wise people know that atonement is critical, that is, changing our behavior, so we don’t keep on making the same mistake over and over again. When I apologize to people I will never meet or to birds or animals or a river, I do not, of course, expect forgiveness. Who would forgive me? Even if I were to walk up and down a broken street in Jamshoro, saying “I’m sorry” over and over every time I encountered someone picking through the rubbish at what used to be their home as they searched for fragments of their prediluvian life, those people would probably ignore my silly and self-centered display of mea culpa, and rightfully so. But does that make some kind of apology useless?

It isn’t necessary to drown myself in contrition, but awareness of culpability and regret about what it has caused can help me to modify my behavior. Perhaps I’ll refrain, as much as possible, from buying foods that have to be shipped to my supermarket from far-off places. Perhaps I will stop flying just to reach a pleasant destination. In the meantime, I’ll continue saying “I’m sorry”, not by rote, but when I am truly grabbed by regret for the ways I and my kind have made this beautiful Earth increasingly uninhabitable for so many beings—plant, animal, mineral, and human.