"Of course I think about it," he said. "Time's passing pretty quickly, but I have nothing lined up. I don't really know exactly what I'll be doing or where I'll be. I do hope to work in community organizing around human rights and global warming."

Anderson said he figures he'll probably start a nonprofit focused on grass-roots organization.

"It is so clear to me that the reason there's been so little action taken on extremely important issues in this country is that there is no organizing mechanism bringing people together to call upon our elected officials to implement positive change," he said. "If we had that organizing mechanism, there would not be four years of genocide in Darfur (Sudan)."

For someone who is regularly outspoken on all sorts of issues, Anderson plans to narrow his focus. When he speaks of "human rights," he is speaking of specific, extreme atrocities rather than an umbrella that includes some of his pet issues, such as gay and lesbian rights or the effect of the U.S. Patriot Act on civil liberties.

"In an organization like this, it's really important to focus," he said. "It shouldn't be more than three or four major issues. If I were to do this right now, I would probably say the genocide in Darfur, human trafficking and global warming."

Creating such a nonprofit group would require money. Anderson, a Logan native, has a circle of friends and cohorts dating from his days as a Salt Lake City civil-rights attorney and current contacts from his international political involvement, and while he admits he has been putting out feelers "a little bit," he says he has yet to start soliciting donations.

"I know people in the human-rights and climate-change communities, and I've mentioned to them what I'd like to do," he said. "But I've done nothing to raise money or really put an organization together. I simply haven't had time."

Facing the future

Anderson's visibility internationally is on the rise. In the past year alone, he has appeared on several worldwide panels on the environment, hosted his second Sundance Summit on global warming and rallied in Utah and the nation's capital against the Bush administration and the war in Iraq.

He has also testified in favor of impeaching President Bush, debated conservative talk-show host Sean Hannity live on stage and dueled with pundit Bill O'Reilly on TV. And Anderson has backed California's efforts to regulate greenhouse-gas emissions above federal levels, touted the city's restorative-justice program in London and called in to radio shows as far away as Canada.

All this has led to accusations in letters to the editor and among political opponents that the mayor is spending time that could be spent on city business angling for a future job, maybe even an appointment in a future Democratic president's administration. Anderson adamantly counters that assertion.