Thread by @doctorow

Some lovely news (for a change): for the first time in 600 years, storks have hatched in Britain. It's thanks to the work of @ProjectStork.

theconversation.com/stork-chicks-h…

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The last recorded stork hatching in Britain was in 1416, when a pair nested on the roof of Edinburgh's St Giles Cathedral.

But hunting, along with the draining of British wetlands for agriculture, eliminated storks, spoonbills, and cranes from the region.

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The White Stork Project released 100 storks in the UK - it's part of a wave of reintroductions across Europe undertaken by different charities. Storks are an "umbrella species" - making habitats hospitable to them incidentally creates habitats for many other species.

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One important note: this isn't the result of humans absenting themselves from the built environment. Humans may have broken the planet, but we can (and must) also fix it. The White Stork Project is about human action, not inaction.

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The damage to our climate and environment is not the result of your poor individual choices. It's structural. Everybody staying indoors for months has barely dented our CO2 problem.

pluralistic.net/2020/05/03/giv…

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"The Tragedy of the Commons" was a fraud that smuggled ecofascism (the idea that we need to exterminate "surplus people" to save the planet) into the mainstream of discourse.

thebaffler.com/latest/first-a…

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Humans are capable of - and obliged to - act as stewards and co-equals with our habitats and the other living things we share them with. "Doing nothing" is something your dead relatives are good at. We don't need more "doing nothing" in our lives.

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Very shortly, you will embark upon a "doing nothing" project that lasts about 7.5b years, until the sun starts to burn out. You've got "doing nothing" absolutely covered. Now is the time to DO SOMETHING.

eof/