The following code is able to localize a variable by its string name.

Indeed. Are you trying to shoot yourself in the foot with a gatling gun? See Why it's stupid to `use a variable as a variable name'.

Localizing global variables (which should be avoided anyways for dynamic data) isn't confined to the lexical scope, but propagated to any inner and called scope, i.e. subroutines (see my/local, space/time (was: Re: The difference between my and local)). Tracking down bugs related to localizing is always great fun.

Any advice on how I can localize a list of variables in the current scope would be great.

Don't - unless you have a very good reason to do so. Use my variables, or use a hash to pass data around.