Hasta La Gadget!

WASHINGTON -– Buoyed by the recent United States-China climate deal, the top climate negotiator for the U.S. said Monday that he’s optimistic heading into this year’s meeting in Lima, Peru.

“I think it will give momentum to the negotiations,” said U.S. climate envoy Todd Stern in remarks at the Center for American Progress Monday. “I think it will spur countries to come forward with their own targets.”

The Lima talks begin on Dec. 1 and continue through Dec. 12. Representatives from more than 190 countries are expected to attend as part of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Under an agreement at a previous meeting in South Africa, nations are to finalize an agreement by the December 2015 meeting in Paris.

The U.S.-China deal, announced on Nov. 12, commits the U.S. to cutting emissions 26 percent to 28 percent by 2025, and China to reaching peak emissions by 2030. It was celebrated as a major breakthrough, as the two countries are the largest emitters in the world and, as Stern put it, are “two historic antagonists” who have now “come together on a presidential level on climate change.”

While the agreement was heralded as a major breakthrough, congressional Republicans have dismissed it, despite years of calling for action from China before the U.S. agrees to cuts.

Stern said it’s unclear what the new leaders of India, the world’s third-largest emitter, will commit to. “It’s a little too early to say where they’re going to position themselves with respect to the negotiations,” he said.

Stern acknowledged India’s continued need for development, noting that “they have to see there’s a path to eliminating those development needs that is as low-carbon as possible.” He also noted that the U.S. “inclination is to certainly want to work with them as closely as possible.” President Barack Obama plans to visit India in January.

The post-2020 commitment the U.S. announced as part of the China deal is “both quite ambitious and also something we can execute based on the authorities we have,” Stern said. “This is a stretch target for us, but our sense is we can get there,” Stern said, adding that he believed those commitments “would be carried forward by the next administration.”

Contributions made to the Green Climate Fund in the last few weeks also have lent optimism to the Lima meeting. Pledges to the fund now total more than $9 billion, short of the target of $10 billion to $15 billion, but contributions have ramped up significantly in recent months. The funding, which would help developing nations cut emissions and adapt to climate shifts already happening, is seen as another way to open a pathway to a global climate agreement.

There are still major uncertainties that need to be worked out in the Lima talks. For one, the exact legal format of the agreement remains unclear. While the predecessor, the Kyoto Protocol, was an international treaty, the U.S. has been one of the countries urging an alternative format, largely because it would be difficult to get the U.S. Senate to approve a climate treaty. At the Durban meeting in 2011, countries committed to reaching “an agreed outcome with legal force under the convention applicable to all parties.”

The alternative framework that has been developed requires all parties to offer climate pledges, but allows them to individually determine what they can attain. Countries are expected to put their goals for the post-2020 time period on the table by early 2015.

“The hope is that structure pushes countries to come forward with their best shot right away, because they don’t want to be embarrassed,” said Stern. “I think that’s an important feature.”

Manuel Pulgar-Vidal, Peru’s minister of the environment and president of the Lima meeting, told The Huffington Post in an interview last month that he expects 12,000 delegates to the meeting, and is working to “to create the atmosphere of confidence that this kind of negotiation needs.” Pulgar-Vidal said the framework that allows each participating nation to make its own pledges, is “a good way to recognize that countries can do a lot domestically” and “that we can find balance between top-down and bottom-up” agreements.

Stern offered temperate expectations for final agreement, saying it would be something that “is not perfect, but is a good strong start.”

“That’s what we’re trying to do,” said Stern. “Whether we can get there or not, I don’t know.”

Can an app help reboot Comcast’s image?

Between surveys showing many dissatisfied customers and the “Customer Service Call From Hell” heard ’round the world, the Comcast brand has taken a beating in recent months.

But the country’s largest cable operator says it’s making changes and investing billions of dollars to improve the customer experience. One of the latest efforts aims to help you spend less time waiting for the technician to fix your Internet or TV service.

Comcast is testing a new service that allows customers to track the arriving technician in real time on their mobile devices. The app will tell you when the technician is 30 minutes away — so in theory you could come home from work to meet the rep. The app will also tell you if the tech has been held up and will be late.

Of course, many people have commutes longer than 30 minutes, but it’s certainly a step in the right direction.

“You have things to do,” Charlie Herrin, senior vice president of customer experience at Comcast, wrote in a blog post announcing the new feature. “Waiting for us to show up shouldn’t be one of them.”

Comcast is certainly not winning any popularity contests these days. In May, the American Consumer Satisfaction Index ranked the company second to last in its yearly ranking of consumer satisfaction.

In July, a recording of a customer service call went viral. During the call, a Comcast rep simply wouldn’t let Ryan Block, a product manager at AOL (parent company of The Huffington Post), disconnect from Comcast. The recording did prompt Comcast to publicly apologize to Block.

The new tool, which seems similar to the car-tracking feature in popular ride-summoning apps like Uber and Lyft, is only being tested in Boston. But if the tests go well, the company wants to roll it out to more customers next year, Herrin wrote in the blog post.

A Comcast spokesperson said it was too early to identify the specific markets that would see the new feature early next year.

The tool borrows another element from the on-demand car service apps: You’ll be able to rate your service experience.

Unlike the transportation market — in many cities you can choose among taxis, car services and ride-summoning apps — many people don’t have much of an alternative if they have a bad experience with a Comcast tech. As Tom Wheeler, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, recently pointed out, most people have no real choice when it comes to truly high-speed Internet.

This new feature in Comcast’s app comes as the company tries to complete a $45 billion purchase of Time Warner Cable, the second largest cable operator in the country. (Time Warner Cable held last place in that American Consumer Satisfaction Index.) The deal, which has opposition from consumer advocacy groups, still needs to be approved by federal regulators.

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