Dates for your diaries: COIN is currently taking a break from events, but watch this space for event announcements in early 2008...

2007 events:

29.11.07 - Rob Hopkins – ‘Planning for Life After Oil - the Transition Concept’ – find out how to inspire and plan energy descent in your town

22.11.07 - 'Growing local in a changing climate: impacts and adaptations on allotments’ - an event in association with the Oxford Allotment Federation

12.11.07 - Ann Pettifor – ‘Avoiding the 'iceberg' of climate: re-routing the Ark'

07.11.07 - George Monbiot – ‘Climate Change - a global injustice’ – a look at the development and poverty aspects of climate change

24.10.07 - George Marshall launches his new book – ‘Carbon Detox: your step-by-step guide to getting real about climate change’ – a fast-moving presentation on how to feel positive and effective

08.10.07 - ‘The Power of Community – How Cuba Survived Peak Oil’ (film followed by discussion) – an inspiring example of existence without oil

04.06.07 Leo Hickman launches his new book 'The Final Call: the true cost of our holidays'

Is the end in sight for our carefree holidays in the sun?

Or is this whole impact-of-aviation thing being overdone?

Leo Hickman, Guardian journalist and author of brilliantly informative and funny ‘A Life Stripped Bare’, makes green issues interesting and fun and is famous for his attempt to live ethically for a year. Leo now turns his attention to the holiday industry, gives us a much-needed opportunity to think about what we are doing in the light of climate change and launches his new book.

‘Excellent. One of the clearest and most sobering analyses I've ever seen of the environmental, social, and economic damage done by tourism...This is a necessary book.’
Philip Pullman

The event is a COIN and Blackwell partnership.

'We have got to find a way to shift to a slow-travel culture. Our very survival as a species could well hinge on it. I very much hope this important book helps to awaken people, and make them want to join the debate.'
Jeremy Leggett

Clubbing in Ibiza; Cruising the Caribbean; Luxuriating in Dubai; Skiing in the Alps; Backpacking in Thailand...

We are all keen tourists. And tourism is the biggest service industry in the world. It employs one in every eleven workers on the planet. Yet while it is built on the sale of fantasies, the unsettling truth is that behind the sunny façade of swimming pools, smiling locals, stunning sights and exquisite cuisine, there is all too often an ugly, damaging reality and it is spreading unchecked to all corners of the globe.

This is an investigative travelogue, written as Hickman journeys around the world, from theme park to golf course, from sunlounger to ecolodge. At each destination we hear from the key protagonists: the holidaymaker, waiter, hotelier, souvenir-seller, prostitute, environmentalist, tour guide, chambermaid and the local politician.

All of them want us to ask ourselves some hard questions: Who really pays for our trip away? And is it even possible to have a ‘good’ holiday?

Here is the story of what they don’t tell you in the glossy brochures.

More praise for the book:

'Hickman has hit on an important subject and it deserves to be taken seriously.'
John Humphrys

'Well written, entertaining and hugely important.'
Zac Goldsmith

'A fascinating and harrowing read. I doubt anyone has spelt out the inherent dangers of tourism so clearly before. The publication of this could well prove to be a 'tipping point'.'
Jason Webster, author of GUERRA

'Leo Hickman's enthralling book should be read by politicians, students and, most of all, by every would-be tourist.'
Tahir Shah, author of THE CALIPH'S HOUSE

15.05.07 Mark Lynas launches his new book Six Degrees: our future on a hotter planet

An eye-opening and vital account of the future of our earth and our civilisation if current rates of global warming persist, by the highly acclaimed author of High Tide.

This is the first time we have had a reliable picture of how the collapse of our civilisation will unfold unless urgent action is taken.
Most vitally, Lynas’s book serves to highlight the fact that the world of 2100 doesn’t have to be one of horror and chaos. With a little foresight, some intelligent strategic planning, and a reasonable dose of good luck, we can at least halt the catastrophic trend into which we have fallen. But the time to act is now.

‘Not unworthy of comparison with Orwell and certainly the breaker of new ground.’
Independent

Past 2007 events in Bristol in partnership with Agoraspace:
October 18th Climate Change - a global injustice with George Monbiot, in partnership with Oxfam SW Campaigns
May 10th Six degrees - our future on a hotter planet with Mark Lynas
June 7th Holidays - time to think again? with Leo Hickman
June 28th Re:Versing the damage with Steve Larkin
July 19th Building for Climate Change with Susan Roaf and George Marshall