Solar Panels Decorate Graves in Spanish Cemetery

Graveyards take up a lot of space. Before the growing population became a pressing problem, people didn’t think too much about the efficiency of dedicating large swaths of perfectly good land to store skeletons for an indefinite length of time. By now we should know better – we’re wasting perfectly good land and if we keep on creating cemeteries at the rate we are today the whole world will end up covered in them. So, the idea to turn a sunny expanse of graves into a solar power plant is a fantastic first step toward common sense.

From TIME Magazine:

Santa Coloma is the first city in Spain to convert its municipal burial place into what is essentially a power plant. The installation consists of 462 solar panels spread over roughly 10,700 sq. ft. (1000 sq. m.), and has a capacity of 100 kilowatts, enough to meet the energy needs of 60 families.

The idea came from Esteve Serret, director of Conste, a company that manages Santa Coloma’s cemetery. Serret had long been interested in renewable energy, and one day, as he worked with his father in the graveyard, he realized they were standing in a potent site for it. “To produce solar energy you need a wide open space,” Serret says. “and in Santa Coloma, the biggest open space is the cemetery.” Indeed, the city’s 124,000 inhabitants are squeezed into a bare 1.54 sq. miles (4 sq. km.) of space — and much of that land is mountainous.

Serret had only to convince the cemetery’s owners: the municipal government. That turned out to be easy, especially because the $935,000 it would cost to install the panels would come from Conste and Endesa, a major power company. “Why not? we thought,” says Begoña Bellete, councilwoman for environmental affairs. “A city like ours has to commit itself to being on the frontlines of the fight against climate change. And this was a great opportunity because the financing would be private. All we had to do was provide the space.”

This is a fantastic start, and in Spain, other cities are already warming up to the idea. Neighboring Barcelona has inquired about the project. It’s hard to imagine this catching on in America, though, what with the complete and unapologetic sense of entitlement to the ideas of the past, whether they work in today’s world or not. Regardless, something’s got to give, soon.

Link [TIME Magazine]

Great Apes Achieve Rights on Par with Humans in Spain

Exciting news for animal rights activists! Spain, known more for bull fighting than for animal rights, recently approved resolutions that would give great apes the right to life and freedom. This is the first time any such legislature has been approved for non-humans.

From Reuters:

Parliament’s environmental committee approved resolutions urging Spain to comply with the Great Apes Project, devised by scientists and philosophers who say our closest genetic relatives deserve rights hitherto limited to humans.

“This is a historic day in the struggle for animal rights and in defense of our evolutionary comrades, which will doubtless go down in the history of humanity,” said Pedro Pozas, Spanish director of the Great Apes Project.

“We have no knowledge of great apes being used in experiments in Spain, but there is currently no law preventing that from happening,” Pozas said.

It will now be illegal and punishable by law to keep apes for circuses, television or filming. It will not become illegal to keep the 315 apes currently in Spanish zoos in captivity, but the bill will require conditions in the zoos to drastically improve.

When I first heard this story I had visions of apes walking around the streets with glasses on, or standing behind the counter at a coffee shop. I’d SO get my drink on there, though it might be a bit unsanitary.

Link [Reuters]

The Swiss Like ‘Em Better In A Zoo: Second to Last Wild Bear in The Country Gets Shot

The Europeans seem to prefer them this way; this bear resides in the zoo in Stockholm. The species this creature belongs to, however, once roamed wild from Ireland to Japan, and from Scandinavia to Africa. The brown bear, as they’re called, is of course scarce is Western Europe now. And a bear that was recently released in Switzerland, where he was one of only two in the country, has come to grief, as MSNBC reports:

Sharpshooters killed one of two wild bears in Switzerland after officials determined it had lost its fear of humans and posed a risk, authorities said Tuesday.

Environmental organizations expressed dismay, but government officials said they had no choice. The 2-year-old brown bear was the younger brother of an animal that met the same fate in Germany’s Bavaria in 2006. Both were part of a project to reintroduce bears to areas of Europe where they had been extinct.

“JJ3 was getting bolder and bolder, and even let people observe him,” said Stefan Engler, president of the canton of Graubuenden. “We saw no other way to influence the behavior of the bear.”

Most people who live in bear country in North America would have to regard this as pretty feeble stuff. Some bears are like this. You have the odd moment of visceral terror, but you live with it.

Still, it’s a miracle that overcivilized Europe has bears at all. Remnant populations of brown bears exist in the mountains in Spain and Italy, and there are a fair number in Eastern Europe, in places like Romania, where former dictator Nicolai Ceausescu liked to shoot them. He is himself well-ventilated now, so maybe the bears pass more peaceful days. Their mere existence is cause for hope.

Link [MSNBC]

Photo: Flickr user M. Prinke.