Four years into a plan to eliminate its carbon emissions, Amazon.com Inc. has lost a key endorsement from the world’s leading watchdog of corporate climate goals.

The Science Based Targets initiative, a United Nations-backed entity that validates net-zero plans, has removed Amazon from its list of companies taking action on climate goals after the tech behemoth failed to implement its commitment to set a credible target for reducing carbon emissions.

Amazon said in 2019 that it would eliminate or offset all of its carbon emissions by 2040, and a year later the company committed to submitting its goals through SBTi’s verification process. The retailer and cloud-computing company is working to electrify its last-mile vehicle fleet and remove fossil fuels from its electricity sources, but hasn’t offered a detailed road map for how it plans to eliminate the other sources of carbon from its business.

Amazon’s emissions are up by about 40% since the company set out its net-zero target, though they ticked lower in 2022 as Amazon’s growth slowed and renewable energy projects came online. This year, the Seattle-based company retracted a sustainability goal that aimed to have Amazon deliver half its packages with zero carbon by 2030. The commitment, it said, was superseded by a companywide net-zero goal.

Amazon is in contact with SBTi, according to Elizabeth Fine, a spokeswoman for the company.

“We’ve collaborated with the Science Based Targets initiative over the last several years in order to determine appropriate submission guidelines and methodologies for complex businesses like Amazon,” Fine said by email. Amazon intends to “continue to work with” SBTi “to establish a path forward for submission.” But “in tandem,” Amazon “will also seek to set science-based targets with other organizations,” she said.

SBTi’s move raises questions around Amazon’s status as a preferred stock among funds marketing themselves as ESG — that is, responsible in their environmental, social and governance policies. The world’s largest ESG exchange-traded fund, which is managed by BlackRock, lists Amazon among its top three holdings. The company is also held in more than 900 ESG funds registered in the European Union alone, representing about 2% of outstanding shares, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

Amazon has the largest market value of the roughly 120 companies to have been stripped of the SBTi endorsement. Just over 5,700 companies have made SBTi commitments or targets, including Microsoft Corp., Walmart Inc., Dell Technologies Inc., Cisco Systems Inc., Apple Inc. and EBay Inc.

Meanwhile, SBTi’s foothold in financial markets keeps growing. Euronext recently launched a series of indexes that only include companies with SBTi-approved emissions reduction targets. The new products, launched in July, “respond to the growing demand for sustainable investment tools from investors and from the market,” Euronext said in a statement.

Paul Chandler, director of stewardship at the UN’s Principles for Responsible Investing, said it’s “disappointing” that “some companies are failing to meet the expectations of initiatives like the SBTi,” which he said is among a small handful of bodies providing “key tools” for investors in their “engagement with companies on climate change.”

“Corporate progress on climate in line with the Paris Agreement is essential to meeting investors’ long term return needs and obligations to clients and beneficiaries,” Chandler said in an emailed statement.

A stamp of approval from SBTi helps investors figure out whether portfolio companies have committed to credible climate goals. Such data are increasingly tracked by the world’s biggest money managers. Norway’s sovereign wealth fund, the world’s largest owner of publicly traded stocks, recently said it’s putting companies on notice as it raises the bar for credible transition plans.

Amazon says that since Amazon committed to set a net-zero target with SBTi in 2020, the organization’s requirements for submission have changed and new methodologies were developed. SBTi’s current metrics to tally emissions aren’t aligned to Amazon’s business model, making it “difficult” to submit a target in a “meaningful and accurate way,” according to the company.

SBTi introduced a stricter compliance policy in January, giving companies 24 months to set a specific target after committing to do so. The organization used to remove companies from its public database if they didn’t live up to that goal, but has instead started singling out laggards by stating clearly that a given company has had its “commitment removed.”

The goal is to “increase transparency and accountability around commitments and eventual validation,” SBTi said. And the expectation is that the move will serve “as a major disincentive for companies to make commitments without taking action,” it said.

The new policy affects only non-financial companies for now. Financial firms have until April 2024 to comply, or six months after SBTi publishes its standard for financial institutions, whichever is later.

“We encourage any and all companies that are removed to reengage with the process to set science-based targets for validation as soon as possible,” SBTi said. “Urgent corporate climate action is required to limit the worst effects of climate change.”

• Cisco is adding recovery to the response process by expanding its extensive set of third-party XDR integrations to include infrastructure and enterprise data backup and recovery vendors
• With its new integration with Cohesity, Cisco XDR will automatically detect, snapshot, and restore business critical data at the very first signs of ransomware

Dubai, United Arab Emirates — Cisco, the leader in enterprise networking and security, is dramatically enhancing its Extended Detection and Response (XDR) solution. By adding recovery to the response process, Cisco XDR is redefining what customers should expect from security products. Today’s announcement brings near real-time recovery for business operations after a ransomware attack.

Cisco continues to drive momentum towards its vision of the Cisco Security Cloud—a unified, AI-driven, cross-domain security platform. With the launch of Cisco XDR at the RSA Conference this year, Cisco delivered deep telemetry and unmatched visibility across the network and endpoints. Now, by reducing the crucial time between the beginnings of a ransomware outbreak and capturing a snapshot of business-critical information to near-zero, Cisco XDR will further support that vision, while enabling new levels of business continuity.

“Cybercrime remains a present risk that cannot be ignored for individuals and organizations across our region. In the last quarter, we have seen ransomware continuing to be one of the most-observed threats. To drive fightback against these cyber-attacks, a platform approach has become crucial. That is why we are consistently striving to build a resilient and open cybersecurity platform that can withstand ransomware attacks,” said Fady Younes, Cybersecurity Director, EMEA Service Providers and MEA.  “Our innovations with automated ransomware recovery are a significant step towards achieving truly unified detection and response data, turning security insights into action.”

During the second quarter of 2023, the Cisco Talos Incident Response (IR) team responded to the highest number of ransomware engagements in more than a year. With the new capabilities in Cisco XDR, Security Operations Center (SOC) teams will be able to automatically detect, snapshot, and restore the business-critical data at the very first signs of a ransomware attack, often before it moves laterally through the network to reach high-value assets.

"Cisco is quickly disrupting the security landscape across their entire portfolio and their XDR solution could become the de facto reference architecture organizations turn to,” said Chris Konrad, Area Vice President, Global Cyber, World Wide Technology. “Not only does it provide broad visibility by integrating data across endpoints, network, cloud, and other sources - this extensive attack surface insight allows for superior threat detection using advanced analytics. Organizations should strongly consider the implementation of Cisco XDR to bolster their security posture and safeguard assets effectively. Cisco undoubtedly is contributing to the overall resilience of any organization.”

Cisco is expanding its initially released, extensive set of third-party XDR integrations to include leading infrastructure and enterprise data backup and recovery vendors. Today, Cisco is excited to announce the first integration of this kind with Cohesity’s DataProtect and DataHawk solutions.

“Cybersecurity is a board-level concern, and every CIO and CISO is under pressure to reduce risks posed by threat actors. To this end, Cisco and Cohesity have partnered to help enterprises around the world strengthen their cyber resilience,” said Sanjay Poonen, CEO and President, Cohesity. “Our first-of-its-kind proactive response is a key piece of our data security and management vision, and we’re excited to bring these capabilities to market first with Cisco.”

Cohesity has a proven track record of innovation in data backup and recovery capabilities. Cohesity’s products provide configurable recovery points and mass recovery for systems assigned to a protection plan. The new features take this core functionality to the next level by preserving potentially infected virtual machines for future forensic investigation, while simultaneously protecting data and workloads in the rest of the environment. Cohesity’s engineers worked alongside Cisco technical teams to dynamically adapt data protection policies to offer organizations a stronger security posture. This complements Cisco XDR’s robust detection, correlation, and integrated response capabilities and will enable customers to benefit from accelerated response for data protection and automated recovery.

Cisco XDR is now available globally to simplify security operations in today’s hybrid, multi-vendor, multi-threat landscape. To learn more, visit cisco.com/go/xdr

-Ends-

About Cisco 

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Cisco and the Cisco logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Cisco and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and other countries. A listing of Cisco's trademarks can be found at www.cisco.com/go/trademarks. Third-party trademarks mentioned are the property of their respective owners. The use of the word partner does not imply a partnership relationship between Cisco and any other company.

Four years into a plan to eliminate its carbon emissions, Amazon has lost a key endorsement from the world’s leading watchdog of corporate climate goals.

The Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi), a U.N.-backed entity that validates net-zero plans, has removed Amazon from its list of companies taking action on climate goals after the tech behemoth failed to implement its commitment to set a credible target for reducing carbon emissions.

The move raises questions around Amazon’s status as a preferred stock among funds marketing themselves as ESG (which stands for environmental, social and governance).

The world’s largest ESG exchange-traded fund, managed by BlackRock, lists Amazon among its top three holdings.

The company is also held in over 900 ESG funds registered in the European Union alone, representing about 2% of outstanding shares, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

Amazon is in contact with SBTi, according to Elizabeth Fine, a spokeswoman for the company.

“We’ve collaborated with the Science Based Targets initiative over the last several years in order to determine appropriate submission guidelines and methodologies for complex businesses like Amazon,” Fine said by email.

Amazon intends to “continue to work with” SBTi “to establish a path forward for submission.”

But “in tandem,” Amazon “will also seek to set science-based targets with other organizations,” she said.

Amazon has the largest market value of the roughly 120 companies to have been stripped of the SBTi endorsement.

Just over 5,700 companies have made SBTi commitments or targets, including Microsoft, Walmart, Dell Technologies, Cisco Systems, Apple and eBay.

Amazon in 2019 said it would eliminate or offset all of its carbon emissions by 2040, and a year later the company committed to submitting its goals through SBTi’s verification process.

The retailer and cloud-computing company is working to electrify its last-mile vehicle fleet and remove fossil fuels from its electricity sources but hasn’t offered a detailed road map for how it plans to eliminate the other sources of carbon from its business.

Amazon’s emissions are up by about 40% since it set out its net-zero target, though they ticked lower in 2022 as the company’s growth slowed and renewable-energy projects came online.

The Seattle-based company earlier this year retracted a sustainability goal that aimed to have Amazon deliver half its packages with zero carbon by 2030.

The commitment, it said, was superseded by a company-wide net-zero goal.

Meanwhile, SBTi’s foothold in financial markets keeps growing.

Euronext recently launched a series of indexes that feature only companies with SBTi-approved emissions reduction targets.

The new products, launched in July, “respond to the growing demand for sustainable investment tools from investors and from the market,” Euronext said in a statement.

Paul Chandler, director of stewardship at the U.N. Principles for Responsible Investing, said it’s “disappointing” that “some companies are failing to meet the expectations of initiatives like the SBTi,” which he said is among a small handful of bodies providing “key tools” for investors in their “engagement with companies on climate change.”

“Corporate progress on climate in line with the Paris Agreement is essential to meeting investors long term return needs and obligations to clients and beneficiaries,” Chandler said in an emailed statement.

A stamp of approval from SBTi helps investors figure out whether portfolio companies have committed to credible climate goals.

Because of climate change, we are experiencing far more natural disasters than ever before in my lifetime. Yet we still seem to be acting as if each disaster is a unique and surprising event rather than recognizing the trend and creating adequate ways to mitigate or prevent disasters like we just saw in Hawaii.

From how we approach a disaster to the tools we could use but are not using to prevent or reduce the impact, we could better assure ourselves that the massive damage incurred won’t happen again. Still, we continually fail to apply what we know to the problem.

How can we Boost our approach to dealing with disasters like the exact Maui fire? Let’s explore some potential solutions this week. Then we’ll close with my Product of the Week, a new all-in-one desktop PC from HP that could be perfect for anyone who wants an easy-to-set-up-and-use desktop computing solution.

Blame vs. Analysis

The response to a disaster recovery should follow a process where you first rescue and save the living and then analyze what happened. From that, you develop and implement a plan to make sure it never happens again. As a result of that last phase, you remove people from jobs they have proven unable to do, but not necessarily those that were in key positions when the disaster happened.

Instead, we tend to jump to blame almost immediately, which makes the analysis of the cause of a disaster very difficult because people don’t like to be blamed for things, especially when they couldn’t have done anything differently.

Generative AI could help a great deal by driving a process that focuses on the aspects of mitigating the problem that would have the most significant impact on saving lives both initially and long-term rather than focusing on holding people accountable.

Other than restrictions this puts on analyzing the problem, focusing on blame often stops the process once people are indicted or fired as if the job is done. But we still must address the endemic causes of the issue. Someone who has been through this before is probably better able to prioritize action should the problem arise again. So, firing the person in charge with this experience could be counterproductive.

Generative AI, acting as a dynamic policy — one that could morph to address a wide range of disaster variants best — could provide directions as to where to focus first, help analyze the findings, and, if properly trained, recommend both an unbiased path of action and a process to assure the same thing didn’t happen again.

Metaverse Simulation

One of the problems with disasters is that those working to mitigate them tend to be under-resourced. When disaster mitigation teams devise a plan, they often face rejection due to the government’s unwillingness to pay for the implementation costs.

Had the power company in Hawaii been told that if they didn’t bury the power lines or at least power them down, they’d go out of business, one of those two things would have happened. But they didn’t because they didn’t do risk/reward analysis well.

All of this is easy for me to say in hindsight. Still, with tools like Nvidia’s Omniverse, you can create highly accurate and predictive simulations which can visibly show, as if you were in the event, what would happen in a disaster if something was or were not done.

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Is Hawaii likely to have a high-wind event? Yes, because it’s in a hurricane path and has a history of high wind events. So, it would make sense to run simulations on wind, water, and tsunami events to determine likely ways to prevent extreme damage.

The answer could be something as simple as powering down the grid during a wind event or moving the electrical wiring underground if powering down the grid was too disruptive.

In addition, you can model evacuation routes. We know that if too many people are on the road at once, you get gridlock, making it difficult for anyone to escape. You must phase the evacuation to get the most people out of an area and prioritize getting out those closest to the event’s epicenter first.

But as is often the case, those farthest from the event have the least traffic, and those closest are likely unable to escape, which is clearly a broken process.

Through simulation and AI-driven communications, you should be able to phase an evacuation more effectively and ensure the maximum number of people are made safe.

Communications

Another significant issue when managing disasters is communications.

While Cisco typically rolls trucks into disaster areas to restore communications as part of the company’s sustainability efforts, it can take days to weeks to get the trucks to a disaster, making it critical that the government has an emergency communication platform that will operate if cell towers are down or have hardened the cell towers, so they don’t go down.

Interestingly, during 9/11, all communication was disrupted in New York City because there was a massive communications hub under the towers that failed when they collapsed. What saved the day was BlackBerry’s two-way pager network that remained up and working. In our collective brilliance, instead of institutionalizing the network that stayed up, we discontinued it and now don’t have a network that will survive the disasters we see worldwide.

It’s worth noting that BlackBerry’s AtHoc solution for critical event management would have been a huge help in the response to this latest disaster on Maui.

Again, simulation can showcase the benefits of such a network and re-establishing a more robust communications network that will survive an emergency since most people no longer have AM radios, which used to be a reliable way to get information in a disaster.

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Finally, autonomous cars will eventually form a mesh network that could potentially survive a disaster. Using centralized control, they could be automatically routed out of danger areas using the fastest and safest routes determined by an AI.

Rebuilding

We usually rebuild after a disaster, but we tend to build the same types of structures that failed us before, which makes no sense. The exception was after the great San Francisco earthquake in 1906, which was the impetus for regulations to Boost structures to withstand strong quakes.

In a fire area, we should rebuild houses with materials that could survive a firestorm. You can build fire-resistant homes using metal, insulation, water sprinklers, and a water source like a pool or large water tank. It would also be wise to use something like European Rolling Shutters to protect windows so that you could better shelter in place rather than having to evacuate and maybe getting caught on the road by the fire.

With insurance companies now abandoning areas that are likely to be at high risk, this building method will do a better job of assuring people don’t lose most or all of their belongings, family, or pets.

Again, simulation can showcase how well a particular house design could survive a disaster. In terms of rebuilding on Maui, 3D-printed houses go up in a fraction of the time and are, depending on the material used, more resistant to fire and other natural disasters.

Heavy Lift

One of the issues with floods and fires is the need to move large volumes of water quickly. While the scale of the vehicle needed to deal with floods may be unachievable near-term, carrying enough water to douse a fire quickly that was still relatively small is not.

We’ve been talking about bringing back blimps and dirigibles to move large objects for some time. Why not use them to carry water to fires rapidly? We could use AI technology to automate them so that if the aircraft has an accident, it doesn’t kill the crew. AI can, with the proper sensor suite, see through smoke and navigate more safely in tight areas, and it can act more rapidly than a human crew.

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Much like we went to extreme measures to develop the atomic bomb to end a war, we are at war with our environment yet haven’t been able to work up the same level of effort to create weapons to fight the growing number of natural disasters.

We could, for instance, create unique bombers to drop self-deploying lightning rods in areas that are hard to reach to reduce the number of fires started by lightning strikes. The estimate I’ve seen suggests you’d need 400 lightning rods per square mile to do this, but you could initially just focus on areas that are difficult to reach.

You could use robotic equipment and drones to place the lightning rods on trees or drop them from bombers to reduce the roughly $100-per-rod purchase and installation cost at volume.

Wrapping Up: The Real Problem

The real problem is that we aren’t taking these disasters seriously enough to prevent them. We seem to treat each disaster as a unique and non-recurring event even though in areas like where I live, they are almost monthly now.

Once a disaster occurs, we have the option of either moving to a safer location or rebuilding using technology that will prevent our home from being destroyed. Currently, most of us do neither and then complain about how unfair it is that we’ve had to experience that disaster again.

Given how iffy insurance companies are becoming about these disasters, I’m also beginning to think that spending more money on hardening and less on insurance might result in a better outcome.

While AI could contribute here, developers haven’t yet trained it on questions like this. Maybe it should be. That way, we could ask our AI what the best path forward would be, and its answer wouldn’t rely on the vendors to which it’s tied, political talking points, or other biased sources. Instead, it would base its response on what would protect us, our loved ones, and our assets. Wouldn’t that be nice?

HP EliteOne 870 G9 27-inch All-in-One PC

My two favorite all-in-one computers were the second-generation iMac, which looked like the old Pixar lamp, and the second-generation IBM NetVista.

I liked the Apple because it was incredibly flexible in terms of where you could move the screen, and the IBM because, unlike most all-in-ones, you could upgrade it. Sadly, both were effectively out of the market by the early 2000s.

Since then, the market has gravitated mainly toward the current generation iMac, where you have the intelligence behind the screen, creating a high center of gravity and a lower build cost. In my opinion, this design creates a significant tip-over risk if the base is too light — as it is in the current iMac.

The HP EliteOne 870 G9 has a wide, heavy base which should prevent it from toppling if bumped, Bang and Olufsen sound (which filled up my test room nicely), a 12th Gen Intel processor, 256GB SSD, 8GB of memory, and an awesome 27-inch panel.

Unlike earlier designs, it has a decent built-in camera that doesn’t hide behind the monitor. In practice, I think this is a better solution because it’s less likely to break.

The HP EliteOne 870 G9 27-inch All-in-One PC is a versatile desktop solution. (Image Credit: HP)

As with most all-in-ones, the 870 G9 uses integrated Intel graphics, so it isn’t a gaming machine. Still, it’s suitable for those who might do light gaming and mostly productivity work, web browsing, and videos. The game I play most often ran fine on it, but it is an older title.

The screen is a very nice 250 nit (good for indoors only), FHD, and IPS display. Also, as with most desktop PCs, the mouse and keyboard are cheap, but most of us use aftermarket mice and keyboards anyway, so that shouldn’t be a problem. The base configuration costs around $1,140, which is reasonable for a 27-inch all-in-one.

A fingerprint reader is optional, but I found Microsoft Hello worked just fine with the camera, and I like it better. The installation consists of two screws to secure the monitor arm to the base, and then the monitor/PC just snaps onto the arm. This all-in-one is a vPro machine which means it will comply with most corporate policies. At 24 pounds, it is easy to move from room to room, but no one will mistake this for a truly mobile computer.

The PC has a decent port-out with 2 USB type Cs, 5 USB type As, and a unique HDMI-in port in case you want to connect a set-top box, game system, or other video source and use it as a TV, so it is a decent option for a small apartment, dorm, or kitchen where a TV/PC might be useful.

Clean design, adequate performance, and truly awesome sound make the HP EliteOne 870 G9 a terrific all-in-one PC — and my Product of the Week.

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of ECT News Network.