The early-evening rides sell out first, operators said, and it was nice Saturday, with the lights set against the glow of the sunset and the Boardwal

holiday light train tickets are selling like hot cakes, operators said Saturday, as they ushered visitors into seven brightly decorated train cars lined up beside the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk.

Saturday was the first trip of the holiday season for the Santa Cruz Holiday Lights Train and Santa's Kingdom, a train ride and arcade partnership between Felton-based Roaring Camp Railroad's Santa Cruz Big Trees & Pacific Railway Co. and the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk.

Holiday operation include the second year of a holiday season train ride in Felton featuring decorated trees and hot cider.

The diesel-electric train does a loop from the Main Beach amusement park to Pogonip and back, rumbling along at about five mph and spanning a little more than an hour, said John Bush, manager of the Roaring Camp trains operations. The ride comes with Christmas carols, cider and lots of scenery and cheer.

"The train is absolutely beautiful," said Lyn Henry of Capitola, who was picking up tickets inside the park's Neptune's Kingdom, which has been transformed into "Santa's Kingdom" for a few weeks.

"I wanted to try this because I want to sing Christmas carols," she added, smiling.

Henry was with her good friend John Wendt and his son, Nicholas, age 6, who was wide-eyed with excitement, though maybe a tad more keen for a game of laser tag that came along with the train tickets.

Business is so good that it is the first

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year in the train ride's 10-year history that they have offered three trips on the first evening, Business Development Director Paul Nakamoto said. Groups from as far away as Taiwan have bought tickets this year, he said.

Ticket sales are up 40 percent over last year and they needed to add an extra train this year in Felton, for the second year of the Holiday Tree Walk which takes visitors through decorated trees surrounding Roaring Camp.

But it was the Holiday Lights Train which drew Kelly Austin of Aptos and her 10-year-old daughter, Sarah, and her friend, 10-year-old Matthew Koda of La Selva Beach.

"I'm a local and I've never been on it so it's very exciting," Austin said. "It's a Santa Cruz tradition and we're finally doing it."

Several people came up as the train was getting ready to roll, and were told, sorry, the 350 seats were sold out.

The early-evening rides sell out first, operators said, and it was nice Saturday, with the lights set against the glow of the sunset and the Boardwalk rides.

Bush, the train manager, said the first day is always a scramble, but that he hopes that their need to add an extra train for the Christmas walk "bodes well for everyone."

We have entered into a technical collaboration with Bangalore-based Reva Electric Car Company to roll out electric variant of our bestselling small ca

General Motors India will expand its pan-India dealership network from 195 at present to almost 250 by the end of March 2010.

We are growing by 10 per cent and hope to keep the momentum going by increasing the network of dealerships and service centres,” General Motors director & vice president (corporate affairs) P Balendran said at a conference call here.

Replying to a query, he said 80 per cent of the Indian four-wheeler market was dominated by small cars. “We have entered into a technical collaboration with Bangalore-based Reva Electric Car Company to roll out electric variant of our bestselling small car, Chevrolet Spark,” he said. The car is likely to hit the market by the middle of next fiscal. The company was also developing CNG and bio-diesel versions of its existing cars for half-million dollar, he added.

Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn described it as being "a compact, high-performance, four-seat luxury Infiniti with zero emissions

Over the past decade, Infiniti has been carefully forging a performance image itself, developing cars with class leading powertrains and dynamics.

With the company recently announcing plans for an electric vehicle--something commonly seen as environmentally friendly and completely lacking in the performance department--that carefully formed image could be in jeopardy.

Infiniti fans shouldn’t be worried as the new electric car will lend itself perfectly to the company’s performance image, according to Ben Poore, Infiniti North American sales boss.

"You can really turn up the performance of those things," explained Poore. "The model will fit perfectly with the performance standards that we've set for the brand. It's going to be a very cool vehicle."

Not much is known about the car but it will be a global model, which means it will be coming to North American showrooms. When it was first announced, Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn described it as being "a compact, high-performance, four-seat luxury Infiniti with zero emissions."

A concept version is already being developed, with an eye toward the production vehicle's design goals described by Ghosn.

No word on any release date but parent company Nissan will have its first electric vehicle, the Leaf, on sale late next year so it’s conceivable that Infiniti’s car will come in 2011.

A little more than six of 10 said that buying energy-efficient appliances, using recycled paper products and car pooling help a lot

Sometimes it's easier to think green than be green.

A survey released Tuesday suggests people have largely embraced recycling bottles and cans, and are inclined to turn down thermostats to save energy. But it also indicated that some paths toward a greener Earth aren't as easily taken — or turned into action.

The telephone poll, conducted for The Associated Press and NBC Universal, tries to gauge attitudes about the environment. It found that 60 percent of those surveyed felt either a "great deal" or "a lot" of personal responsibility to protect the environment, while 37 percent rarely, if ever, even thought about the impact of their actions on the Earth's health.

Nearly eight of 10 people, who were concerned about environmental protection, said they believe their actions are helping to protect the environment.

The survey found that nearly seven in 10 people believe recycling bottles and cans would help the environment a lot. The same number said that about adding energy-saving insulation to their homes.

A little more than six of 10 said that buying energy-efficient appliances, using recycled paper products and car pooling help a lot. A little more than half said it would make a lot of difference to turn down the thermostat, reuse water bottles and take your own reusable bag when grocery shopping.

While many of the respondents — a cross section of adults from across the country — said these actions would help the environment "a great deal," or at least "a lot," when asked about some specific actions, the gap widened between what they believe to be important and what they, themselves, have any intention of doing.

In some cases, the inability to turn their green priorities into action reflected geography or economics.

Take the matter of car pooling, or using mass transit. More than six in 10 people said they thought it would help the environment. Yet only three in 10 said they were very likely to do it, and four in 10 said they were not at all likely to car pool or take mass transit.

A third of those surveyed lived in rural areas where mass transit was generally not readily available and where car pooling would be less likely.

Yet, only 44 percent of urbanites and 32 percent of people living in the suburbs also said they were very likely to use mass transit or car pool.

Janice Meehl, 54, a fourth-grade teacher in the town of North East, Pa., and one of the participants in the survey, said she fervently recycles bottles and cans, keeps the thermostat down and years ago added insulation to her all-electric home, cutting her energy bill in half. It saves money but also "it's doing the right thing for the environment. They go hand in hand," she said in a follow-up interview.

While she commutes 70 miles round-trip to work each day, she says mass transit or car pooling "is not an option. If it were, would I use it? Probably."

Like Meehl, seven in 10 people surveyed said they thought adding energy-saving insulation in their homes would be a good idea for the environment. But only half said they were very likely to do it and one in five respondents, said they were highly unlikely to add insulation. In some cases, respondents said the structure of their house prevents more insulation to be added easily.

About 45 percent of those surveyed embraced the idea of gas-electric hybrid cars, but only one in five said they were very likely to buy such a vehicle, and half said they were "not at all likely" to buy one.

"They're too expensive right now," said Vaughan Oliver, 65, of Mount Vernon, Ky., in a follow-up interview. "You would have to have one for years and years and years to make it feasible to pay for itself." Oliver, interviewed as he drove his Jeep Cherokee down Interstate 65 south of Lexington, said he might consider a hybrid "in another 10 years" when he says he'll be more secure that they will not cause him a problem.

Today, gas-electric hybrids can carry a $4,000 to $7,000-or-more price premium over similar gasoline-powered vehicles.

The poll suggested in a number of other areas people were very likely to act to help the environment:

_72 percent were very likely to recycle cans and bottles;

_63 percent were very likely to turn down thermostats;

_62 percent were very likely to buy energy-efficient appliances;

_59 percent were very likely to use cold water for clothes washing;

_59 percent were very likely to buy recycled paper products.

More than half said it would help the environment if people brought their own shopping bags to stores, and 46 percent said they were very likely to do so, while 25 percent ruled it out.

NBC Universal's sponsorship of the poll was related to their "Green is Universal" week of programming about environmental issues.

The poll was conducted Nov. 5-9 by GfK Roper Public Affairs and Media. It involved landline and cell phone interviews with 1,006 adults nationwide and has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points

The outage also briefly plunged the whole of neighbouring Paraguay into darkness

Candles and car headlights were the only illumination in Brazil's two biggest cities as a huge power cut brought chaos.

Tens of millions of people in Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paolo and cities in at least four other states were plunged into darkness.

Traffic ground to a near standstill.

Trapped subway passengers had to make their way along the tracks to the next station to escape.

Rio's international airport has its own emergency generators.

Flights were still coming and going but travellers were delayed as cabbies refused to drive through crime-ridden areas in the dark.

For residents the street was a more comfortable place to spend the evening than sweltering at home.

[Ricardo de Sousa, Resident of Rio de Janeiro]:
"It's too hot at home. I can't stay inside. It's so hot that I have to stay out here on the street riding my bike until it gets better."

The power began to come back on after three hours.

The outage also briefly plunged the whole of neighbouring Paraguay into darkness,

It's being blamed on transmission problems from a huge dam that supplies hydro-electric power to both nations.

Chandra claims that governments could garner greater environmental benefits by purchasing carbon offsets (currently priced between $3 and $40 per tonn

Amarish Chandra, a professor at UBC’s Sauder School of Business and co-author of the study said, “If the intention of rebate programs is to replace gas guzzlers with hybrids, they are failing.”

He goes on to say that large vehicle sales have risen steadily since the introduction of hybrid rebates. The study also finds that the majority of consumers who purchase hybrids were not motivated to do so by government rebates.

“People are choosing hybrids over similarly priced small- and medium-sized conventional cars, which are not far behind hybrids for fuel efficiency and emissions,” says Chandra. “The reductions in carbon emissions are therefore not great.”

Hybrid rebate programs are currently offered by the governments of the U.S. and 13 states, including Washington, Oregon, Illinois and Colorado, and five Canadian provinces, including B.C., Ontario, Quebec, PEI and Manitoba. The Canadian government offered hybrid rebates during 2007-2008.

“Our estimates indicate that two-thirds of people who buy hybrids were going to buy them anyway,” said Chandra. “So for the majority, rebates are not changing behavior - they are subsidizing planned purchases.”

“When B.C.’s rebate jumped from $1,000 to $2,000 in 2005, the actual cost of reducing carbon emissions more than doubled,” he says, noting that Ontario recently increased its rebate to a maximum of $10,000 per hybrid vehicle. In the U.S. hybrid rebates can range from $900 up to $3,400 but some models no longer qualify, such as the Toyota and Honda hybrids. Apparently, the inefficiency of rebate programs rises disproportionately when governments increase rebate levels.

The study finds that Canadian provinces that offer rebates have spent an average of $195 per tonne of carbon saved or, equivalently, $0.43 for every litre of gasoline that a vehicle consumes over its 15 year average life expectancy.

But this isn’t enough. Chandra claims that governments could garner greater environmental benefits by purchasing carbon offsets (currently priced between $3 and $40 per tonne on carbon markets) or investing in green jobs and technologies. However, carbon offsets are a murky area, and the U.S. government has currently passed a cap and trade policy which I fondly call “crap and raid”.

While hybrid rebates help governments to appear environmentally progressive, Chandra suggests that some programs may serve as de facto “bailouts” for the North American auto industry.

“The criteria for Ontario’s recent rebate increase seem designed to benefit domestic manufacturers, especially General Motors,” Chandra says. “The biggest rebates will be given to purchasers of the Chevy Volt, rather than other hybrids like the Toyota Prius.”

In addition to Chandra, the other authors include Sumeet Gulati, assistant professor in UBC’s Dept. of Food and Resource Economics and Milind Kandlikar of UBC’s Liu Institute for Global Issues and Institute of Asian Research. Researchers used Canadian vehicle sales data over a 17-year period from 1989 to 2006. Results are believed to extend to the U.S. market, given the similarities between auto industries, in terms of vehicle buying patterns, pricing structures and car models.

People are now buying green SUVs, green homes, and clean water in carcinogenic-free types of plastic bottles

Going green is one of the hottest trends in Georgia these days. But one of the largest components of a green lifestyle is being overlooked.


People are now buying green SUVs, green homes, and clean water in carcinogenic-free types of plastic bottles. Governments and businesses are buying recycled copy paper, constructing green buildings, spending millions on green car fleets, and getting rid of styrofoam coffee cups in their kitchenettes.


But most, if not all, are buying food made in unsustainable ways from far off places. Georgia is caught up in concerning paradox. We produce plenty of food – the state is No. 1 for chicken production, and 6th for overall vegetable production.


Yet, of the $20 billion Georgians spend on food each year, $16 billion is going to out of state producers. Huge industrialized agricultural operations and global food distributions systems dominate the physical and political landscape of Georgia. 1,465 farms have disappeared in Georgia Since 2002.


The large-scale operations strain local economies, especially in rural Georgia, keeping state poverty rates near the nation’s lowest. And the poverty, in turn, perpetuates an unhealthy diet dependent on cheap, processed food.


We’re not talking about changing America’s food system overnight. And of course some people will always prefer McDonald’s over Whole Foods – that’s just the reality.


But we do know that there are a lot of people who like to know where there food came from, who believe in their community, and who want to protect their own bodies and the land from harmful chemicals.


The economic benefits of shopping locally are huge. We know that when you spend $100 at a typical chain grocery store, about $125 makes it into the local economy. When you spend $100 at a farmers’ market, $175 makes it into the local economy.


There are environmental reasons to eat from nearby farms, too.


In Georgia, agriculture is the number one source of run-off water pollution. Globally, agriculture accounts for 33 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions. Conventional agriculture relies on synthetic fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides, which are all made with fossil fuels. And the process to make them is also very energy intensive.


If every U.S. citizen ate one local meal a week, America’s oil consumption would be reduced by 1.1million barrels of oil per week.


It’d be great if everybody ate from a nearby farm. In fact, a strong contingent of urbanites are so into the good food movement that they beat farmers’ to the farmers markets.


But the harsh reality is that there is much more demand than supply. As a state, we are far behind our neighbors when it comes to the amount of land that’s farmed organically. Here, it’s less than 1 percent.


Consumers and chefs are just dying to get their hands on local and organic food. Increasing demand is our biggest hurdle now. The solution is that we must grow more growers, and convert those who farm in ways that are not sustainable.


The key is that we must move Georgia from a commodity-based system to a community-based system, and you do simply that by starting with the food on your plate.