**Abstract**

The Christian Churches' traditional environmental ethic is stewardship. Laudato si' (2015) has augmented stewardship ethics with an ethics of care. The ethics of care is also the one that inspires Francis of Assisi and Bonaventure, indigenous people and feminist ethics. Laudato si' puts a major emphasis on education and pays scant attention to policy because deep changes allegedly need to occur first at the individual level. Policy toward global ecological problems has been difficult to formulate and implement because the latter are public goods "wicked problems". Some policy experts, in their respective reviews of U.S. climate policies, tend to fall back on ethics rather than policy as a major motivator for appropriate individual behavior, comforting pope Francis' conviction. The relatively recent ethics of relational values may be a useful tool to build bridges among different types of ethics. Could religion, any religion, be an alternative motivator for pro-environmental behavior? Abundant sociological analysis concludes to the contrary. Eco-theology is creation theology that has been shaped by environmental problems. Its summary provided here in point form offers the potential for becoming a mobilizing "grand-narrative". However, it is still in its infancy and does not have a unified methodology yet.

**Keywords:** stewardship, ethics of care, virtue ethics, ethics of relational values, creation theology, eco-theology

### **1. Introduction**

Shellenberger and Nordhaus argued many years ago that the environmental movement needs a grand narrative capable of motivating people and nations to take ecology seriously, i.e. capable of changing values, behaviors, and policies towards greater harmony between mankind and the balance of nature ([1], pp. 32–34). This message is translated by nearly all religions into treating creation with reverence and respect. The encyclical letter Laudato si' from Pope Francis which came out on May 24 2015 contributes to the required grand narrative not so much by changing the Christian worldview as by changing its ethical emphasis [2]. The relatively technocratic stewardship ethical perspective which goes back to the ancient Greek and Roman philosophers—that implicitly Shellenberger and Nordhaus reject—has been replaced or, at least, refined into the ethics of care. The association of these ethics, practiced by Francis of Assisi and formalized by his disciple Bonaventure, provides one side of the imaginary required by Shellenberger and Nordhaus, the ethical side, the stable side of the required discourse. The other side, less stable as it depends on our current theology, philosophy, and cosmology, is offered by eco-theology. There is very little current eco-theology in Laudato si' but the latter opens the door extraordinarily wide to the former ([3], pp. 145–153; [2], c.2, c.6, Sections 6, 7).

This chapter reviews the ethics of care and its ramifications as well as the more traditional virtue ethics, also present in the encyclical, and ties them together with the more recent ethics of relational values. While ethics and education are capable of changing values, policies are needed to change behaviors. While Laudato si' emphasizes the need for education, it does not devote much attention to policies except to remind us of the environmental toolbox and to critique some of these tools for their underlying utilitarian foundations ([3], pp. 172–175). Based largely on D. Jamieson's and N. Rich's [4] respective critiques of climate policy in the U.S., I echo their conclusion that some current environmental problems are "wicked problems" and, therefore, not amenable to easy solutions ([3, 5, 6], Section 2). While the sociological literature on religion as a motivator for environmental behavior finds that religious motivation is weak at best ([6], Section 3), I propose to disseminate widely the current eco-theological story despite its limitations. The latter can nicely tie with the teachings of Paul and some fathers of the Church and thus with the traditional treasure chest of Christian Churches. Moreover, the eco-theological story is widely œcumenical ([3], pp. 60–77).

This chapter is based in part on a book on Laudato si' I wrote in French in 2019 [3] and on an unpublished paper in English posted on the Academia platform in the same year [6]. The last section of this chapter on eco-theology is new.
