Peter Owen-Jones

2013

What Future?

Peter’s question today is what are we leaving our children? What type of planet, society? We’re leaving them a world in grave peril: seas that are denuded and polluted; mass extinctions; a toxic mixture of government, corporations and media, who uphold the illusion of ownership – not a reality, merely a belief system. We are the first generation who are consciously leaving behind a planet in a worse state than we inherited it.

Peter Owen-Jones is an Anglican priest, author and TV presenter. He started life as a farm labourer and later gave up a career in advertising to follow a calling to the Anglican ministry. He has presented various BBC series, including: Around the World in 80 Faiths; How to Live a Simple Life, in which he tried to follow in the footsteps of St. Francis of Assisi by turning his back on consumerism; and Extreme Pilgrim, in which he lived as a Chinese Buddhist monk, a Christian monk and an Indian ascetic. In 2000 with the Diocese of Ely he founded the Arbory Trust, which is to this date still the only Christian woodland burial site. He is an ardent environmentalist and the co-founder of the Life Cairn Project, memorials to commemorate all the species which have become extinct as a result of human activity.

Biography published 2013

Watch our other 2013 speakers

Matt Harvey

I want to go renewable so my streets are less canoeable: 5 poems of hope

Jo Royle

Designing our way out of plastic seas

Jonathon Porritt

Sustainability for all

TEDxExeter 2013