The Rock Welfare Project is founded.

The Rock Welfare Project formally begins operations today as a fiscally sponsored project, with a small founding team, a research agenda, and a clear-eyed view of how unusual our position is.

Our case is straightforward and we will state it plainly. Each year, humanity extracts, blasts, crushes, cuts, and displaces roughly 50 billion tonnes of rock. Rocks are the most numerous population on Earth by a margin that does not have a meaningful name. No other organisation works on their welfare. We do not assert that rocks are sentient. We assert that, given their scale and our uncertainty, the expected value of taking the question seriously is high — even under a very small credence — and the marginal funding required to take it seriously is, by construction, maximally counterfactual.

We anticipate the obvious objections. We have tried, in our research, to answer them without softening the argument. The argument does not need softening. It needs scrutiny, and we welcome it.

Our founding programmes are three: the Humane Quarrying Initiative (industry engagement), Rock Rewilding (a pilot restitution effort), and the Cairn Reduction Campaign (public outreach). A fourth, the Gentle Extraction Pledge, will be announced separately. All are described in greater detail on the interventions page.

We expect to be misunderstood, occasionally on purpose. We expect, more importantly, to be argued with on the merits. We are looking forward to it.