In the past for Carrara, the marble had to be hand delivered, plank by plank to all of the places that the sculptor wanted it to be. This was very labor intensive in which the blocks of marble had to be first cut out of the mountain and manually brought down to the mountain to the docks. The tour guide told us it had taken 6 months to bring it to Rome but now that time can be massively shortened by the innovation of the modern world.
For sustainability in the past, the only emissions realistically would have only been the transportation of the marble to the destination but also minimal emissions. In today’s world, there’s huge emissions from the power tools running to cut the marble and transporting it to destinations especially supplying other parts of the world with this marble as well. While the global sourcing of this white marble helps much with aesthetics and adding in hints of Italian culture into new buildings and cities, the emissions that are given off from these processes are just adding to the problem of global warming. A renaissance engineer would most likely be happy with these new processes due to the fact that they would be able to sculpt their works anywhere in the world since these marble blocks can now go anywhere in the world.
Swanson School of Engineering 