The current draft has recently completed review for comments by several federal agencies. After their comments are incorporated into the draft, it will be distributed to the states, tribes, and the federal agencies again for a more detailed eight-week review, to end in September. Comments from that review will be incorporated, and the final product will be released to the public during the winter. Public release of the proposal is meant to be a starting point for discussion of national goals. Toward that end, the EPA plans to reconvene the roundtables around the country that contributed to the creation of the proposal three years ago.
Most federal agencies are reluctant to speak on the record about another agency's draft proposal.
But according to the EPA, comment so far has been that the goals are indeed ambitious, and the agency has been commended for such a massive undertaking. Beyond that, there have been such technical suggestions as alternative data sources for tracking progress toward the goals. A more substantive issue is the inclusion of a previous U.S. commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2000. The commitment is part of the federal Climate Change Action Plan developed to meet the international Framework Convention on Climate Change, which was set in motion in March 1994. The United States has since publicly backed away from that commitment, and the White House may see to it that that change is reflected in the next draft of Environmental Goals .