The Hook Lecture is produced by the Leeds Church Institute in partnership with Leeds Minster and the University of Leeds School of Philosophy, Religion and the History of Science. Carmody Grey delivered the lecture on 17 November 2021 in Leeds Minster, and we publish it here in full.

Why are we here? Not only here in this beautiful and ancient space, but here in this historical moment? Why are we where we are as a human family right now?

A few weeks ago, I was at a meeting of the world’s faith leaders at the Vatican. The President of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences informed us that his one-year-old granddaughter is likely to become an adult in a world that is uninhabitable.

As a child, I was numb with horror contemplating the certainty that one day the sun will explode and engulf the earth. That is due to take place in around four billion years. Now we live a world in which what is at issue is whether or not we will have a habitat – a home – in one generation’s time.

The Paris climate agreement, which is nonbinding, and already unheeded, intended to limit warming to two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. Its odds of succeeding, according to a recent study based on current emissions trends, are around one in twenty. That was before the last round of climate talks.