Humans Will Destroy Anything for Profit

Hard to believe that sand is a resource that is facing a serious shortage.  Unfortunately, it's true.  The world is running out of the "good" kind of sand that is critical to a broad array of industries.

Bad Sand                       Image: David W. Siu

Our modern civilization is built on sand: concrete, paved roads, ceramics, metallurgy, petroleum fracking—even the glass on smart phones—all require the humble substance. River sand is best: grains of desert sand are often too rounded to serve as industrial binding agents, and marine sand is corrosive. A United Nations study calculates, however, that humankind’s total consumption of sand—more than 40 billion tons a year—is now double the amount of sediments being replenished naturally on the Earth by the sum of the world’s rivers.

Explosive growth in China and India is depleting the world's supply of river sand and in the process endangering wildlife and humans.

Good Sand        Photograph by Paul Salopek

“Sand mining can change the course of rivers,” says Rishikesh Sharma, a retired government biologist who has worked for years at the National Chambal Sanctuary, a premier Indian river preserve that shelters endangered crocodiles called gharials as well as river dolphins. “The mining hurts wildlife by removing basking and egg-laying habitat.” Rampant sand mining directly harms people too. Stripping rivers of their sand causes water tables to drop—an ominous concern in India, where millions already face historic water shortages. Massive sand mining also has eroded river deltas across Asia, exposing coastal communities to severe land loss, and worsening the effects of climate change-induced sea level rises.

 Is there anything that humans won't do to destroy the planet?