Cities Urged to Take Environmental Lead : Science: Local officials from 28 nations convene in Los Angeles to determine immediate steps they can take to allay global warming and other problems.

Declaring that national governments have been too slow to act, mayors and local officials from 28 nations convened in Los Angeles on Thursday, trying to reach agreement on immediate steps cities can take to allay global warming and other environmental problems.

Organizers of the event, which drew delegates from Eastern European countries, the Third World and Western nations, said it marks a new level of activism by cities to curb global environmental problems.

“We are, in effect, building our own pro-democracy movement with respect to environmental issues. We are unwilling to wait until the federal government or international bodies act, because we can’t afford to wait,” Irvine Mayor Larry Agran said.

The Los Angeles meeting follows an 18-nation conference on global warming called by President Bush, which ended Wednesday in Washington. Several of those meeting in Los Angeles criticized the President for stressing possible economic impacts and a need for further research instead of calling for immediate action to curb the problem.

“We want to deal with practical solutions more than simply debate about what is more important, research or economics,” said Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley, a co-sponsor of the Los Angeles summit.

By the time it ends today, sponsors hope that delegates will agree to a joint resolution committing their cities to concrete policies to slow global warming and the destruction of the Earth’s protective ozone layer.

Among steps cities can take, they said, are changing local building codes to require energy-saving florescent lighting, increasing use of mass transit, placing controls on ozone-destroying chemicals and planting trees.

Municipal officials and scientists attending the conference conceded that the impact of their efforts is likely to be more political than environmental

“It will make a tremendous difference,” said Philip Michael Kelly, a leading climatologist from Great Britain. “There are obviously limits on how much localities can do in terms of a percentage of the total problem. But, (their influence) goes beyond strict percentage reductions.”

Agran of Irvine said cities can lead the way by example and by creating grass-roots political pressure on governments to approve more comprehensive international accords. Agran said Irvine is responsible for 1/1,000th of worldwide emissions of chlorofluorocarbons or CFCs and other ozone-destroying chemicals and should be responsible for 1/1,000th of the solution.

The Irvine City Council has approved strict new controls on emissions of ozone-destroying CFCs that take effect July 1. Similar steps have been taken by Toronto, South Pasadena, San Jose, Denver, and the states of Hawaii and Vermont.

“It’s in our hands to move,” said environmental official Lefkos T. Middleton of Nicosia, Cyprus.

The summit is co-sponsored by the city of Los Angeles, The Greenhouse Crisis Foundation, the Local Government Commission and the Center for Innovative Diplomacy.