Because we can’t depend on Government. They have shown us this. Global government and business leaders gathered recently in Glasgow,Scotland for the UN’s COP26 climate conference. While they made new commitments to help address climate change, it’s clear that we can’t depend on government and business leaders to save the planet; we have to pitch in and do our part. We need a bottom-up climate-action movement.
Stephen Hinton joined Pivot Projects, a global voluntary collaborative group dedicated to improving sustainability and resilience about 18 months ago. The group was formed to rethink how the world works and explore how to introduce the major changes needed. Some members are experts in the sciences and the humanities; others are environmental activists or regular people who see themselves as world citizens. The journey is now a book.
Journalist Steve Hamm—who embedded in the enterprise from the start—explores their efforts and shows how their approach provides a model for achieving systemic change. Chronicling the group’s progress along an uncharted path, he shows how people with a variety of skills and personalities collaborate to get things done.
Through their work, Hamm examines some of today’s most important technologies and concepts, such as systems thinking and modeling, complexity theory, artificial intelligence, and new thinking about resilience. The book features vivid, informal profiles of a number of the group’s members and brings to life the excitement and energy of dynamic, smart people trying to change the world.
Part journal of a plague year and part call to action, The Pivot tells the remarkable story of a collaborative experiment seeking to make the world more sustainable and resilient.
Join a pivot event. Book and Event
Now, Pivot Projects is reaching out to libraries, local governments, book stores, and civil society groups in communities to promote climate activism and help people organize to make change. Our one-hour It’s Time to Pivot event, which can be virtual or a combination of virtual and in person, explains the need for a pivot to sustainability and explores ways of getting it done. It’s a call to action and a guiding discussion for people in communities who want to help address climate change.
The presentation includes an explanation of Pivot Projects and its beliefs and tools by author Steve Hamm, who has been an embedded journalist with the group and wrote a book about it, The Pivot: Addressing Global Problems Through Local Action, which was published by Columbia University Press. He describes the group’s journey and the lessons learned along the way. The presentation also includes input, potentially, from local people who are Pivot Projects volunteers and local groups that are already launched on initiatives aimed at improving sustainability and resilience. The goal is to share ideas and to catalyze action.
If you’re interested in exploring further, please contact Stephen Hinton via the contact pages
ABOUT STEVE HAMM
Steve Hamm is an author, journalist, and filmmaker. He has worked for a number of newspapers and magazines, including BusinessWeek and the San Jose Mercury News, and has made documentary films about immigration, policing, and opioids. He is coauthor of Smart Machines: IBM’s Watson and the Era of Cognitive computing (Columbia, 2013) and Rise of the Data Cloud (2020), among other books.
Stephen Hinton Consulting 