To the Editor: Bob Herbert ("No Work, No Homes," column, Aug. 14) laments federal inaction to curb unemployment.

Despite federal inaction on climate change, Dr. Kates said, 129 American cities have programs to cut greenhouse-gas emissions, and California has moved to reduce car emissions.

The mayor, David Kapell, considers it a calculated provocation - a gesture of solidarity with his poorest neighbors and a cry of protest at federal inaction.

As Greenfield and Brownlee expressed their impatience with federal inaction, an intergovernmental meeting was convened in May.

Late last year, seeing the federal inaction on global warming, New York and six other northeastern states joined together to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, the heat-trapping gases that contribute to climate change.

In a letter to Attorney General William P. Barr last month, Gov. Lawton Chiles complained of "the federal Government's inaction on this issue since 1982."

Mr. Levy is absolutely right to say that local communities suffer from federal inaction.

In New York, the industry has strongly focused on reliability for decades, but it, too, is limited by federal inaction and the difficulties of supplying power to the metropolitan region, the energy-hungry corner of the state.

If New York had its own law, it would better empower New York's attorney general to aggressively fight fraud against Medicaid and other joint federal and state programs in the face of federal inaction.

Demographers say the majority of immigrants are now settling in suburbia, where frustration with perceived federal inaction against illegal newcomers has led to a variety of ad-hoc local initiatives.