PBS News Weekend

Marble from the Italian town of Carrara has been used to shape Michelangelo's David in Florence, the Pantheon in Rome, and the interior of the Freedom Tower in New York City. And according to geologists, more marble has been extracted in the past two decades than in the previous two thousand years of quarrying. Driven by a building bonanza in Asia and the Gulf states, the precious stone known as the "white gold" is used to construct portions of luxury hotels and glistening mosques. But it comes at a growing environmental cost. NewsHour Weekend Special Correspondent Christopher Livesay reports from Tuscany.