Thus Der Spiegel today. “Sand is becoming so scarce that stealing it has become an attractive business model,” elaborates the newspaper. “With residential towers rising ever higher and development continuing apace in Asia and Africa, demand for the finite resource is insatiable.” A building or construction economist that I still am deep in my heart, I kind of rejoiced at this article. Build, build, build! The beaches are among the least of our problems! As it turns out, though, sand is a finite resource, just like oil. The United Nations Environment Program estimates global consumption at about forty-billion tons per year, with close to thirty-billion tons of that used in concrete. Sands are “now being extracted at a rate far greater than their renewal,” a March 2014 UNEP report claims. “Sand is rarer than one thinks,” it reads. Which is why sand robbers can be found all around the world: Cape Verde, Kenya, Morocco, Jamaica, India, New Zealand… In the end, the article is a useful reminder that there are too many people on earth. If sand has become scarce, it is hard to think of anything that has not. But the remedy is already behind the corner. Climate change will clean up the mess. And soon enough.