New York Times: This month, the mayor of Mesa, Arizona, a city of about 500,000 inhabitants in the American Southwest, became the 1,000th local leader to sign on to a climate change agreement under the United States Conference of Mayors. In signing the compact – initiated in 2005 by Greg Nickels, the mayor of Seattle and the president of the conference – local leaders commit to reducing their cities’ carbon emissions in concert with the national goals laid out by the Kyoto Protocol: a 7 percent …