What a brilliant essay! Every paragraph - sometimes each line - prompted a response from me. You not only get me thinking, but you raise my awareness and motivate me to act in any way I can.
Thank you.
If Substack journalism doesn't qualify for the Pulitzer Prize, it should. And you have earned it.
I am in awe of your detailed logical presentation of the history and possibilities for humans to recognize our fundamental rights and duties to protect the planet's resources. I've been a fan of your work since I first discovered you. Thank you!
Also wanted to say that this essay took me back to Kim Stanley Robinson’s climate-science novel, Ministry for the Future. Hauntingly prescient story. My adult kids chided me for reading something they saw as bleak but I also see it as a hopeful piece of fiction in that it’s populated with characters desperately working to create change in new, imaginative ways- exactly what the planet needs.
Rachel Carson, environmental pioneer, pretty much launched the environmental movement. Back in the 70s when Earth Day was born, most people mocked the very idea. What we have been given by nature has been an awesome paradise that we should have lived WITH, and could have, but for some illogical or deformed abnormality within our genes. In 2006 there was the release of Al Gore's "Inconvenient Truth"...we've had opportunity several times when the warnings were presented, only a few, not enough, payed heed...It's still inconvenient! We should NEVER have been let loose on this precious life force.
This is excellent and true on so many levels. Before I moved to North Bend I lived in Boulder Colorado where I had the opportunity to study atmospheric science as a non major at the university. After graduating I had the great privilege to work as staff at the National Center for Atmospheric Science. I assure all of you that the climate change problem is real and it is affecting all of us now. Even then nearly 20 years ago the data kept coming in showing the change was happening faster than the scientists projected. One day after reading a news story about an idea to shoot sulphuric into the upper atmosphere to mitigate the problem I asked a scientist over lunch what he thought of the idea. He shared what the unintended consequences could be. I didn’t know I was asking the atmospheric scientist whose focus was the chemistry of these sulphuric compounds. Bad idea!
After moving to the Coos Bay Area I learned about what the timber industry did here and how they blamed environmentalists for their departure. It appears the economy around here is still sinking. I hear environmentalists still being blamed. I want to see people shift from fossil fuels to renewable energy. I want solar panels on every roof and would like this subsidized instead of oil and gas. I am not sure if the floating wind power is the right solution but this week I read that the Japanese invented buoys that can capture wave power and provide enough power for entire regions and think that is worth considering.
I do also believe the rights of nature needs to be enshrined internationally and nationally.
"We are burning fossil fuels to fight over fossil fuels in a region being rendered uninhabitable by the burning of fossil fuels." This circlular statement, in a nutshell, describes the idiocy of where we find ourselve in this particular moment. Brilliant essay Mary, this will take multiple rereads to digest completely.
Climate change and the environment are my #1 concern. There's certainly many more concerns that are HUGE but if our planet isn't livable in 24 years, then it's all pointless. In my memory, the news about climate warming started being published in 1970's and got little attention. In 2006 Al Gore's movie An Inconvenient Truth made it a real issue to some/most but didn't result in the big changes that were needed. Also in 2006 the UK started putting out the BBC's fantastic documentaries with Sir David Attenborough. In Canada, we've had scientist David Suzuki in British Columbia doing a tv show called The Nature of Things and he's talked about climate change in his books and on his show with great regularity and clarity. He's 90'ish now and has just put out another book so he's doing the talk show circuit and when I saw him I sat down to watch. His message now is that we've not done nearly enough. We've failed to observe the warning and mitigate through action the damage we've been doing. He says by 2050 humanity will be dealing with climate crises that they've never experienced before. He says it's too late to rely on big governments to implement corrective action and it's up to communities to start making individual action plans to handle what's coming.
During yet another day of rain yesterday, I watched BBC documentary called Human. It traces the human species from their very beginning until now in 5 episodes. I believe it was episode 3 when they told of there being several forms of humans living on Earth. We're most familar with Neandrathals (who were not big stupid creatures like we used to think) and Homo Sapiens (which is our foremost ancestry) and others. At the end of the episode, wherein we'd seen Homo Sapiens crush the rest become the one and only survivors, one scientist gave his summary which was that the other forms of humans could live side by side in peace and cooperation. But Homo Sapiens have an internal drive to explore, conquer, dominate, and exploit ... leaving damage and destruction behind them everywhere they go. Homo Sapiens have shown across their long history that they cannot live cooperatively with their environment or even with each other.
If Al Gore and David Suzuki and Sir David Attenborough and others are correct, we may have 24 years of increasing climate warming only to arrive at our own extinction. Wow ... take that in!!! And then this morning I read all the info that Mary has provided here in her essay, which I'm about to read again.
Best ever done on this subject and so introspective. And undoubtably we do not know the real numbers telling this story, the same story (only more technical and far more affidavit) since early 70’s?
It’s April 19th we got some rain the temp dropped rapidly hot then cold as spring is here. We are farmers. We HAVE to keep track, and last year in 107° under the hay baler ( repairing)was the last year haying for us old timers, we saw it coming, and we ain’t 73 anymore.
Where does common sense enter in, take over, do what’s needed vs try ringing the blood out of the turnip for the last bit of _ _ _ _.
It’s not denial..sorta like ‘oh I can’t find her, she is hiding ‘ a game one plays with a 3-4 yr old.
Is it abuse, no accountability, lies? They certainly are frequent subjects-all three.
My oldest has been in alternative energy (solar) for long years. We watch it , wind ,and water’s part grow , improve, and ‘Mom’ here built a system utilizing ‘the mother’s gifts’, gravity feeds, passive gains, aimed at leaving it all better for the next generation. But I also watched shoddy houses built, deforestation, plastics and waste pollute or kill …was it denial, lack of accountability?
They knew. It didn’t matter.
Will it become inhabitable , need we go back living in caves…they’re cool…😬🤦♀️
Sigh. I completely agree with this, but I couldn't finish it, and I wrote a book trying to help people imagine the future we're barreling towards (Hot Earth Dreams).
Worse, I don't think I can share it. Why? There are four or five excellent essays crammed into this thing. Read separately, in sequence, with a chance to walk around, weed, the garden, and process it, might be transformative. Put together into one long scream, delivered with a firehose, drink or drown...?
So I'd beg you to go back and chop this monsterpiece into a series of smaller essays, and publish those. I've got a lot of friends who desperately need to see this, and I can guarantee that they're not going to read most of it as published. And to repeat, they desperately do need to read the material.
Totally agree -AND - PLEASE make this essay publicly available - know you need subscribers, but this message is too important - typical response I got from my group..
"Can't access the whole article, but it seems to be all about climate which, while crucial, is only a tip-of-the-iceberg symptom of our predicament.
Bill (Prof Bill Rees - UBC)
"The ecologically necessary is politically infeasible but the politically feasible is ecologically ineffective when not disastrous."
Wow. Awesomely and breathtakingly insightful. Mary Geddry brilliantly identifies and integrates the many themes and forces and factors influencing and shaping the earth's climate to demonstrate that climate change - specifically the heating of the earth at a rate that will end life on it - is real and is happening now. She demonstrates that while remedying this is within our conceptual powers - we cam understand it - the economic, legal and governmental forces and factors are extraordinarily difficult to manage. More than difficult, nearly impossible. But awareness of the science, math, politics and civics of the problem, combined with faith in the human spirit, still holds some degree of potential to reverse the process of earth's deterioration. I recall my experimental biology course in 1958, BSCS (Biological Sciences Curriculum Studies I think) where among other experiments we learned how to count the growth of single cell forms of life by looking through microscopes and using grids. We were given 3-4 inch across petri dishes that contained the food necessary for cell nutrition as cells multiplied. After placing a few cells in the dishes, we observed the same pattern in every dish: as the living cells multiplied, the numbers increased slowly at first, demonstrated initially by a slow upwards curve. This curve gradually increased in steepness as more and more cells grew and themselves multiplied, until the curve was very steep, more vertical than horizontal. Then at some point, when the curve was very steep, it suddenly dropped precipitously in a vertical straight line downwards as the cell population died off, completely. The reason: nutrition sources were totally depleted and the cells' waste products overwhelmed the system. Biology showed use the problem, but not the solution. That's a matter for civics and social studies, informed by biology and the science and math Geddry sets out. How to solve the problem? What can I do? I'm a retired professor in the field of "law-related education" (see www.gaje.org, Global Alliance for Justice Education) and will get to work on creating curriculum integrating science, math, literacy and civics to foster awareness, understanding and capacity to deal with the climate problem that Geddry has so magnificently set out. I also think of the recent press conference of the astronauts, which I watched on TV, where I expected to hear a lot of science but instead saw all 4 astronauts talk about the solitude of earth in space and the value of teamwork and feelings of love the experience gave them. We possess the science and the human qualities to deal with the climate problem, now that they are so clearly identified.
An absolute tour de force Mary. Thank you for your research and writing skills, and above all, for your passion. We live in different countries but you have opened my eyes to many essential things that are universal. You have also fanned my impotent rage about what is being done deliberately to the US by the current malignant government.
“It is a suicide note written in legislative language.” The greatest indictment I have read of the current administration and its policies. Thank you -required reading!
Long, but brilliant and important. I have also argued in several forums that we need a moral and legal framework that recognizes the rights of other species and generations to come -- that what we are doing to the planet is a form of looting from all who will follow us.
What a brilliant essay! Every paragraph - sometimes each line - prompted a response from me. You not only get me thinking, but you raise my awareness and motivate me to act in any way I can.
Thank you.
If Substack journalism doesn't qualify for the Pulitzer Prize, it should. And you have earned it.
Wow - this is one of the best cautionary assessments of our current situation that I
have read. Spread it!
I am in awe of your detailed logical presentation of the history and possibilities for humans to recognize our fundamental rights and duties to protect the planet's resources. I've been a fan of your work since I first discovered you. Thank you!
Also wanted to say that this essay took me back to Kim Stanley Robinson’s climate-science novel, Ministry for the Future. Hauntingly prescient story. My adult kids chided me for reading something they saw as bleak but I also see it as a hopeful piece of fiction in that it’s populated with characters desperately working to create change in new, imaginative ways- exactly what the planet needs.
Rachel Carson, environmental pioneer, pretty much launched the environmental movement. Back in the 70s when Earth Day was born, most people mocked the very idea. What we have been given by nature has been an awesome paradise that we should have lived WITH, and could have, but for some illogical or deformed abnormality within our genes. In 2006 there was the release of Al Gore's "Inconvenient Truth"...we've had opportunity several times when the warnings were presented, only a few, not enough, payed heed...It's still inconvenient! We should NEVER have been let loose on this precious life force.
This is excellent and true on so many levels. Before I moved to North Bend I lived in Boulder Colorado where I had the opportunity to study atmospheric science as a non major at the university. After graduating I had the great privilege to work as staff at the National Center for Atmospheric Science. I assure all of you that the climate change problem is real and it is affecting all of us now. Even then nearly 20 years ago the data kept coming in showing the change was happening faster than the scientists projected. One day after reading a news story about an idea to shoot sulphuric into the upper atmosphere to mitigate the problem I asked a scientist over lunch what he thought of the idea. He shared what the unintended consequences could be. I didn’t know I was asking the atmospheric scientist whose focus was the chemistry of these sulphuric compounds. Bad idea!
After moving to the Coos Bay Area I learned about what the timber industry did here and how they blamed environmentalists for their departure. It appears the economy around here is still sinking. I hear environmentalists still being blamed. I want to see people shift from fossil fuels to renewable energy. I want solar panels on every roof and would like this subsidized instead of oil and gas. I am not sure if the floating wind power is the right solution but this week I read that the Japanese invented buoys that can capture wave power and provide enough power for entire regions and think that is worth considering.
I do also believe the rights of nature needs to be enshrined internationally and nationally.
Thank you!
This is one of the most important documents written since Jared Diamond's ''Collapse" which should have gotten at least one Noble Prize.
"We are burning fossil fuels to fight over fossil fuels in a region being rendered uninhabitable by the burning of fossil fuels." This circlular statement, in a nutshell, describes the idiocy of where we find ourselve in this particular moment. Brilliant essay Mary, this will take multiple rereads to digest completely.
This truly is an incredible essay. Nature’s Bill of Rights is such a powerful way to look at things.
Climate change and the environment are my #1 concern. There's certainly many more concerns that are HUGE but if our planet isn't livable in 24 years, then it's all pointless. In my memory, the news about climate warming started being published in 1970's and got little attention. In 2006 Al Gore's movie An Inconvenient Truth made it a real issue to some/most but didn't result in the big changes that were needed. Also in 2006 the UK started putting out the BBC's fantastic documentaries with Sir David Attenborough. In Canada, we've had scientist David Suzuki in British Columbia doing a tv show called The Nature of Things and he's talked about climate change in his books and on his show with great regularity and clarity. He's 90'ish now and has just put out another book so he's doing the talk show circuit and when I saw him I sat down to watch. His message now is that we've not done nearly enough. We've failed to observe the warning and mitigate through action the damage we've been doing. He says by 2050 humanity will be dealing with climate crises that they've never experienced before. He says it's too late to rely on big governments to implement corrective action and it's up to communities to start making individual action plans to handle what's coming.
During yet another day of rain yesterday, I watched BBC documentary called Human. It traces the human species from their very beginning until now in 5 episodes. I believe it was episode 3 when they told of there being several forms of humans living on Earth. We're most familar with Neandrathals (who were not big stupid creatures like we used to think) and Homo Sapiens (which is our foremost ancestry) and others. At the end of the episode, wherein we'd seen Homo Sapiens crush the rest become the one and only survivors, one scientist gave his summary which was that the other forms of humans could live side by side in peace and cooperation. But Homo Sapiens have an internal drive to explore, conquer, dominate, and exploit ... leaving damage and destruction behind them everywhere they go. Homo Sapiens have shown across their long history that they cannot live cooperatively with their environment or even with each other.
If Al Gore and David Suzuki and Sir David Attenborough and others are correct, we may have 24 years of increasing climate warming only to arrive at our own extinction. Wow ... take that in!!! And then this morning I read all the info that Mary has provided here in her essay, which I'm about to read again.
Best ever done on this subject and so introspective. And undoubtably we do not know the real numbers telling this story, the same story (only more technical and far more affidavit) since early 70’s?
It’s April 19th we got some rain the temp dropped rapidly hot then cold as spring is here. We are farmers. We HAVE to keep track, and last year in 107° under the hay baler ( repairing)was the last year haying for us old timers, we saw it coming, and we ain’t 73 anymore.
Where does common sense enter in, take over, do what’s needed vs try ringing the blood out of the turnip for the last bit of _ _ _ _.
It’s not denial..sorta like ‘oh I can’t find her, she is hiding ‘ a game one plays with a 3-4 yr old.
Is it abuse, no accountability, lies? They certainly are frequent subjects-all three.
My oldest has been in alternative energy (solar) for long years. We watch it , wind ,and water’s part grow , improve, and ‘Mom’ here built a system utilizing ‘the mother’s gifts’, gravity feeds, passive gains, aimed at leaving it all better for the next generation. But I also watched shoddy houses built, deforestation, plastics and waste pollute or kill …was it denial, lack of accountability?
They knew. It didn’t matter.
Will it become inhabitable , need we go back living in caves…they’re cool…😬🤦♀️
Sigh. I completely agree with this, but I couldn't finish it, and I wrote a book trying to help people imagine the future we're barreling towards (Hot Earth Dreams).
Worse, I don't think I can share it. Why? There are four or five excellent essays crammed into this thing. Read separately, in sequence, with a chance to walk around, weed, the garden, and process it, might be transformative. Put together into one long scream, delivered with a firehose, drink or drown...?
So I'd beg you to go back and chop this monsterpiece into a series of smaller essays, and publish those. I've got a lot of friends who desperately need to see this, and I can guarantee that they're not going to read most of it as published. And to repeat, they desperately do need to read the material.
Could you do that? Thanks.
Totally agree -AND - PLEASE make this essay publicly available - know you need subscribers, but this message is too important - typical response I got from my group..
"Can't access the whole article, but it seems to be all about climate which, while crucial, is only a tip-of-the-iceberg symptom of our predicament.
Bill (Prof Bill Rees - UBC)
"The ecologically necessary is politically infeasible but the politically feasible is ecologically ineffective when not disastrous."
From: gaiapc@groups.io <gaiapc@groups.io> on behalf of battyhugh <Hugh@austrop.org.au>
Sent: Sunday, April 19, 2026 03:02
To: gaiapc@groups.io <gaiapc@groups.io>
Subject: [gaiapc] our real situation, well explained
https://marygeddry.com/p/the-oldest-debt
This is truly an excellent and comprehensive analysis of where we are
headed and the roadblocks we have put in place to prevent us achieving any sort
of "sustainability".
H
Wow. Awesomely and breathtakingly insightful. Mary Geddry brilliantly identifies and integrates the many themes and forces and factors influencing and shaping the earth's climate to demonstrate that climate change - specifically the heating of the earth at a rate that will end life on it - is real and is happening now. She demonstrates that while remedying this is within our conceptual powers - we cam understand it - the economic, legal and governmental forces and factors are extraordinarily difficult to manage. More than difficult, nearly impossible. But awareness of the science, math, politics and civics of the problem, combined with faith in the human spirit, still holds some degree of potential to reverse the process of earth's deterioration. I recall my experimental biology course in 1958, BSCS (Biological Sciences Curriculum Studies I think) where among other experiments we learned how to count the growth of single cell forms of life by looking through microscopes and using grids. We were given 3-4 inch across petri dishes that contained the food necessary for cell nutrition as cells multiplied. After placing a few cells in the dishes, we observed the same pattern in every dish: as the living cells multiplied, the numbers increased slowly at first, demonstrated initially by a slow upwards curve. This curve gradually increased in steepness as more and more cells grew and themselves multiplied, until the curve was very steep, more vertical than horizontal. Then at some point, when the curve was very steep, it suddenly dropped precipitously in a vertical straight line downwards as the cell population died off, completely. The reason: nutrition sources were totally depleted and the cells' waste products overwhelmed the system. Biology showed use the problem, but not the solution. That's a matter for civics and social studies, informed by biology and the science and math Geddry sets out. How to solve the problem? What can I do? I'm a retired professor in the field of "law-related education" (see www.gaje.org, Global Alliance for Justice Education) and will get to work on creating curriculum integrating science, math, literacy and civics to foster awareness, understanding and capacity to deal with the climate problem that Geddry has so magnificently set out. I also think of the recent press conference of the astronauts, which I watched on TV, where I expected to hear a lot of science but instead saw all 4 astronauts talk about the solitude of earth in space and the value of teamwork and feelings of love the experience gave them. We possess the science and the human qualities to deal with the climate problem, now that they are so clearly identified.
An absolute tour de force Mary. Thank you for your research and writing skills, and above all, for your passion. We live in different countries but you have opened my eyes to many essential things that are universal. You have also fanned my impotent rage about what is being done deliberately to the US by the current malignant government.
“It is a suicide note written in legislative language.” The greatest indictment I have read of the current administration and its policies. Thank you -required reading!
Long, but brilliant and important. I have also argued in several forums that we need a moral and legal framework that recognizes the rights of other species and generations to come -- that what we are doing to the planet is a form of looting from all who will follow us.