Rocky and Redford team up

Utah's most famous environmentalists — Robert Redford and Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Anderson — are teaming up.

The pair is planning a new environmental congress where local officials from across the country can learn what they can do to stave off global warming. The congress, being dubbed the Sundance Summit, is slated for July as Anderson, along with Redford staff members and the International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives, work out the details.

While the summit remains in its planning stages, a representative of ICLEI, headquartered in Berkeley, said representatives were in Salt Lake City and at Sundance this week working out details.

Meanwhile, Anderson has been inviting several mayors to the summit. Thursday Anderson was in Colorado for a clean energy conference sponsored by the University of Colorado at Denver. Several mayors from Colorado attended the conference, where Anderson gave a presentation about what local governments can do to help curb climate change brought on by greenhouse gas emissions.

The conference stressed that local governments can use alternative fuels to not only save money but also reduce environmentally unfriendly emissions. In Salt Lake City, for instance, the simple change of switching city lamps to energy-saving bulbs has netted great cost savings, which the city used to purchase clean wind power.

But in order for such alternative fuels to catch on, new coalitions of political allies — ones that traditionally don't mix, like conservative members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and liberal environmentalists — will have to join forces, said conference organizer Heidi Van Genderen, with the University of Colorado.

"Maybe that's what Rocky's trying to do at Sundance," she said.

Current plans call for the Sundance Summit to spend one day in Salt Lake City before moving to Sundance, nestled in the Wasatch Mountains in Provo Canyon.

The conference is "something that the mayor is working on with Robert Redford and his staff and ICLEI" — pronounced "ick-lee," explained Lisa Romney, who advises the mayor on environmental issues and implements new environmental issues at City Hall.

Mayors from across the United States will be urged to attend the summit, which will focus on why it is beneficial for local governments to use alternative fuels to help curb climate change, among other topics.

"They are inviting mayors to Salt Lake and to Sundance to sit down and talk about the things that can be done to reduce harmful emissions," Romney said.