No subject could be more important than this. One week before COP26 UN Climate Change Conference, our Autumn Lecture Series addresses the question confronting the future of our entire planet and asks what is our dream for our planet and what we must do now.

Nicholas Holtam was Bishop of Salisbury 2011-21. For seven years he was the C of E’s lead bishop on the environment and chaired its national Environmental Working Group. He has contributed to the European Churches Environmental Network and the Anglican Communion Environmental Network. From 2015-21 he was one of 26 Lords Spiritual in the House of Lords speaking mainly on environmental matters. Previously he was Vicar of St Martin-in-the-Fields from 1995-2011.

Dr Emily Grossman is an internationally acclaimed public speaker, bestselling science author and TV personality, with a Double First in Natural Sciences from Cambridge University and a PhD in Molecular Biology. She is a co-founder of the group Scientists for Extinction Rebellion and lead author of their free easy-to-read online guide to the climate and ecological crisis, Emergency on Planet Earth. Emily has delivered a critically acclaimed TEDx talk on Why Science Needs People Who Cry. Her latest children’s book, World-Whizzing Facts: Awesome Earth Questions Answered, aims to help young people understand what’s going on about the planet and what they can do to help.

Dr Austen Ivereigh is a British writer, journalist, and Fellow in Contemporary Church History at the Jesuit-run Campion Hall, University of Oxford. He is author of two biographies of Pope Francis: The Great Reformer. Francis and the Making of a Radical Pope (2014) and Wounded Shepherd. Pope Francis and his Struggle to Convert the Catholic Church (2019). During the coronavirus lockdown in summer 2020 he wrote a book with the Pope on his vision for a post-covid world. Pope Francis’ Let Us Dream: The Path to a Better Future: In Conversation with Austen Ivereigh was published by Simon & Schuster in December 2020 in English and Spanish, and later across the world in various languages. Austen lives near Hereford with his wife Linda on a small farm, which features in his regular column in The Tablet on ecological regeneration, ‘Wild Faith’.