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Protecting the Environment in Mallorca

Mallorca, one of the Balearic Islands in the chain off of the coast of Spain, has become well known for the pristine beauty of the island as well as the clear blue water just off its beaches.  Tourism is a growing industry, has been for the last fifty years, bringing more and more tourists and more and more locals, moving from other countries in hopes of finding jobs in the restaurants, shops, beach resorts and 5 star hotels Mallorca.  While this is very good for the economy, it has the possibility of wreaking havoc on the environment.  The government of Spain has taken notice.

Ten years ago, the capital city of Mallorca, La Palma, starting installing energy saving light bulbs into the traffic lights.  While the bulbs use less energy during the day, they put out a brighter light at night, thus attacking two issues with the same response.  Energy usage is down as the lights use less wattage to operate, and they put out about 1,500 less tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere every year.  The effect of having them burn brighter at night has reduced the number of traffic accidents around the island.  And now, after ten years, all of the traffic lights on the island are of the energy saving kind, making La Palma the first city to partake in such a state of the art procedure.

The country of Spain also has the distinguished honor of producing the largest capacity of wind generated power, second only to the county of Germany.  The government subsidies the plants for the last eight years and while plans are being made to cut the founding, the plants do produce a profit at the end of every year, so more wind plants will continue to be built.  After the conference last year in La Palma the government assured that although funding for the wind plants is going down, the funding they are dedicating to solar power will increase 50 percent.  This will have an effect not only for the islands off the coast of Spain, but perhaps for the rest of the world, perhaps serve as inspiration for the rest of the world as they are proving that a big, and growing city, can exist and actually make profits off cleaner and more environmentally sound ways of generating energy.

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1. Water sports to enjoy in Mallorca
2. Ibiza and Spanish History
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