Sand barges in the Caribbean waters, Grenadines. Photograph: © SAF — Coastal Care
Excerpts;
The billionaire brothers who control San Francisco-based online payments company Stripe are spending a quarter of a million dollars to import special sand to a remote Caribbean beach.
Carroll Muffett of the nonprofit Center for International Environmental Law warned that direct air capture consumes too much energy to be efficient, while mineralization projects like the olivine plan would require mining on a scale rivaling the coal industry to attain global impact.
“It is best understood as a public relations stunt,” Muffett said of Stripe’s initiative…
Also of Interest:
Can Adding Sand to Beaches Save Them? How Stuff Works (04-13-2018)
The question is, can beach nourishment keep up with the ever-increasing forces of climate change or, like Sisyphus forever pushing his boulder up the hill, is adding sand to beaches an expensive, temporary fix to a long-term problem?..
Coastal geologist criticizes beach renourishment efforts; By Robert S. Young, PhD; The State (08-17-2016)
Rob Young, who heads the Program for the Study of Developed Shorelines at Western Carolina University, said the government is subsidizing coastal development with renourishment money – and that’s costing taxpayers. Communities across the country have spent millions of dollars renourishing beaches. Those efforts encourage people to rebuild after every major hurricane…
Factbox: Sifting Through U.S. Beach Sand Numbers; Reuters (02-16-2018)
A look at the billions of dollars behind beach renourishment: Is it worth it?; WMBF (10-15-2018)
Sand washes away as quickly as it can be dumped, Bathtub Beach, FL, TCPalm News (11-17-2017)
Between 2004 and 2014, some $13.6 million was spent on beach renourishment in Martin County, Florida. About $7.1 million came from local funds — your tax dollars. In the past two years, more than $6 million from a variety of sources has been spent to renourish and restore dunes at Bathtub Beach alone…
Sand, Rarer Than One Thinks: A UNEP report (GEA-March 2014)
Despite the colossal quantities of sand and gravel being used, our increasing dependence on them and the significant impact that their extraction has on the environment, this issue has been mostly ignored by policy makers and remains largely unknown by the general public.
In March 2014 The United Nations released its first Report about sand mining. “Sand Wars” film documentary by Denis Delestrac – first broadcasted on the european Arte Channel, May 28th, 2013, where it became the highest rated documentary for 2013 – expressly inspired the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) to publish this 2014-Global Environmental Alert.
