Eco-Tainment #15: The Lorax

This is it. This is the last Eco-Tainment entry. After this, I'm going to wrap the series up by writing a two-part blog essay about general trends in environmental fiction, and what we can expect in the future. So what will we be looking at today? Quite possibly one of the most famous environmental works of all time--Dr. Seuss's The Lorax. First published in 1971, The Lorax is told mainly in flashback. The narrator is the Once-ler, who is never seen except for his hands.
The Once-ler tells how, long ago, he arrived in the land where the story takes place and began cutting down the forests of truffula trees to make "thneeds"--essentially a stand-in for just about any superfluous consumer product imaginable. He is repeatedly warned about the consequences of what he does by the Lorax, a short, hairy creature who "speaks for the trees" and is displeased at the Once-ler's wasteful abuse of the forest and its resources. Yet the Once-ler continues to ignore the Lorax, until finally the truffle trees are all cut down, the animals are gone, and the sky is dark with smog.
Finally he realizes the error of his ways, but it is too late.
The beauty of The Lorax is that unlike so many other works of environmental fiction, it does not resort to demonizing those who pollute and destroy nature. Even though he makes one disastrous decision after another, the Once-ler never truly comes off as a villain. He is simply doing his job, and several times brings up important questions that even environmentalists must consider. Even the fact that his face is hidden factors into this; this drives home the point that pollution is not caused by specific people, but can be caused by anyone. 
I chose to end my Eco-Tainment series with The Lorax for the same reason I began it with Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind. Both of these works portray their environmental messages in a sophisticated, nuanced way, and should be regarded as classics of the genre.


The author (left) and the Lorax (right) at Universal Studios Florida.