LOS ANGELES -- Government officials and policy experts from around the world will head to California this week, summoned by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger for an international summit on greenhouse gas emissions.

Schwarzenegger hopes the gathering will show local representatives how their regions can regulate the emissions blamed for contributing to global climate change without destabilizing their economies. He will encourage them to prod their national governments to do more to curb emissions.

The Republican governor organized the conference as an attempt to influence a United Nations gathering in Poland next month. Schwarzenegger has said he wants his summit to inform negotiations over a new global climate treaty, which the U.N. hopes to finish by December 2009.

"The United Nations is looking at the big picture, but what we want to know is, how do we do this?" said Linda Adams, secretary of the California Environmental Protection Agency.

The two-day climate summit begins Tuesday in Beverly Hills, with some 700 participants expected, including scientists, environmentalists and industry representatives.

Schwarzenegger has been a leading advocate for reducing greenhouse gas emissions and gained worldwide notoriety when he signed California's landmark emissions law in 2006.

He also has been critical of what he sees as a lack of meaningful action on climate change from the Bush administration.

The U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has said temperatures worldwide could increase between 4 degrees and 11 degrees Fahrenheit by 2100 unless nations reduce their emissions.

Yet division remains over how much countries should be required to cut their output, especially as the world grapples with a crippling financial crisis. Italy and several Eastern European nations have argued that the costs of cutting emissions is too much for their industries to bear during the economic downturn.

The California summit will send a signal that local governments and businesses can reduce emissions at a time when industrialized countries are being asked to commit to aggressive targets, said Richard Kinley, deputy executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

"It's not going to be easy to mobilize all of these things that need to be done," Kinley said in an interview with The Associated Press before leaving Germany for the conference. "For me, it is extremely important to give governments the confidence they can go forward and adopt ambitious policies and targets knowing there is a foundation that can deliver the results."

Schwarzenegger has maintained that forcing utilities and businesses to cut emissions will promote innovation. He says that will boost California's economy by fueling a boom in green technology and saving money on electricity and fuel bills.

A study released last week by UC Berkeley estimates that California alone could face as much as $23 billion a year in property damage over the next century if nothing is done to combat climate change.

The law Schwarzenegger signed two years ago will require California's major polluters to cut their emissions by about a third by 2020. While the law has been widely embraced by environmentalists and green-technology firms, California regulators are just beginning the difficult process of implementing it.

Balancing the mandatory emission reductions with cost concerns raised by business and industry groups is among the challenges.

The California Chamber of Commerce and major manufacturing sectors have warned that California's required emission reductions could force businesses to send jobs out of state.

State Assemblyman Sam Blakeslee, a Republican from San Luis Obispo, said it would be challenging for the governments represented at this week's summit to mandate emission cuts.

"It's critically important we find solutions to global warming that don't hurt the economy (and) that we incentivize new jobs that allow new technologies to be developed as quickly as possible," said Blakeslee, who plans to the attend the summit. "But pursuing these environmental goals needs to be balanced with the other challenges that we face."

Schwarzenegger's summit is funded entirely by businesses and nonprofit groups. It will feature sessions intended to show how energy-intensive industries such as cement and steel manufacturing can reduce their energy use, a primary source of carbon emissions.

Indonesian officials will come to California looking to strike a deal involving the state's need to cut its emissions and Indonesia's desire to limit illegal logging in its rain forests.

Indonesia, for example, might be able to sell emission credits to California companies in exchange for protecting its forests.

Deforestation accounts for about 20 percent of the world's carbon emissions, and Indonesia is home to the planet's second largest complex of rain forests.

The Schwarzenegger administration has arranged for the carbon emissions associated with the conference to be offset by sending money to environmental causes around the world.

An analysis by The Associated Press revealed that the air travel alone of the 1,400 invitees would discharge more than 2,554 metric tons of carbon dioxide -- a so-called carbon footprint equivalent to that produced from 424 cars driven for a year.

The governor's office said about half the invitees are expected to attend. The AP obtained the invitation list after filing a California Public Records Act request and calculated the total carbon emissions based on roundtrip air travel to Los Angeles. It used the online calculator employed by the U.N.

Travel for officials from Indonesia, China and other parts of Asia will produce the most greenhouse gases. A roundtrip flight on a commercial jetliner from Jakarta, Indonesia, for example, will produce 10.8 metric tons of carbon, according to the AP analysis. That's the equivalent of consuming 22.8 barrels of oil.

The carbon offset money from Schwarzenegger's conference will fund alternative energy projects in Brazil, China, India, Russia and Idaho, the governor's office said. In addition, attendees' room keys, name badges, lunch boxes and coffee cups will be made of recycled material.

International negotiators have a December 2009 deadline to complete the next global warming treaty. It intends to cut in half the amount of carbon dioxide discharged into the atmosphere from transportation, industry and power generation by mid-century.

The agreement would succeed the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012 and does not include the U.S. or China -- the world's largest emitters.