Around six billion tonnes of sand is dredged from the world's oceans every year, a new report says.

Around six billion tonnes of sand is dredged from the world’s oceans every year, a new report says.

  • Hot Saucerman@lemmy.mlEnglish
    521·
    1 year ago

    Man, sometimes you just have to sit back and laugh at the absolute horror of being alive.

    We as a species are so, so, so fucked.

    • Fredselfish @lemmy.ml
      382·
      1 year ago

      Everyday I discover some new way corporations are destroying our lives on this planet all for a monterrey system we made up.

      • agent_flounder@lemmy.oneEnglish
        5·
        1 year ago

        monetary*

        Yeah it’s like every time you turn around there’s a dozen more articles on how we are actively wrecking the shit out of our planet.

        I’m kind of at the point where I just assume 99% of humanity is going to die off at some point (might even live to see it whee).

        And, hopefully, humanity will never be able to reconstruct modern society because we’ve used up all the easily discoverable resources.

        We’ll just be stuck in the iron, bronze or probably stone age until rats evolve and destroy us in a million years.

      • pulaskiwasright@lemmy.mlEnglish
        42·
        1 year ago

        We’re in a very tough spot. There are more humans alive today than have ever died. We want to keep everyone alive for obvious reasons and that means we’re going through resources fast. All the solutions are not pleasant. We need to choose a path:

        1.live a more austere life and cut down on luxuries drastically for everyone. 2. Use the government to limit childbirth

        Both are extremely unpleasant, but it’s going to need to happen or else nature will force both options in us and also add massive amounts of death.

  • AutoTL;DR@lemmings.worldBEnglish
    13·
    1 year ago

    This is the best summary I could come up with:

    Around six billion tonnes of sand is dredged from the world’s oceans every year, endangering marine life and coastal communities, the UN says.

    Sand is the most exploited natural resource in the world after water and is used to produce concrete and glass.

    The UN Environment Programme (UNEP) said some vessels were acting as vacuum cleaners, dredging both sand and micro-organisms that fish feed on.

    “The scale of environmental impacts of shallow sea mining activities and dredging is alarming,” said Pascal Peduzzi, who heads UNEP’s analytics centre GRID-Geneva.

    Large vessels were “basically sterilising the bottom of the sea by extracting sand and crunching all the microorganisms that are feeding fish”, Mr Peduzzi said.

    The UNEP recommended that sand dredging should also be banned from beaches to protect coastal resilience and economies.

    The original article contains 298 words, the summary contains 131 words. Saved 56%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!

      • blazera@kbin.social
        42·
        1 year ago

        Not the sand part, the ocean part. Weight is usually a major factor in large scale resource industries like this, why on earth would they want wet sand? Plus thats gotta be more expensive property to buy the rights to.

        • AdditionEnglish
          24·
          1 year ago

          Not all sand is equal. We dredge up ocean sand because the particle shape and composition is excellent for concrete. Other sand isn’t as good.