Environmental Issues In The Lorax By Theodor Seuss Geisel

When looking at how the media portrays environmental issues, one huge book/movie is The Lorax. Written by Theodor Seuss Geisel under the pen name, Dr. Seuss, The Lorax tackles environmental issues through a simple kids book. A man by the name of Once-ler, travels to a land that is full of trees with fluffy leaves called a Truffula tree. The Once-ler decides to use these leaves to make something called a thneed, which is something that can be turned into anything, but, right when he chops down his first tree, the Lorax pops out and tells him to please stop. The Once-ler ignores these pleas from the Lorax, and soon, his shop turns into a giant factory, due to the popularity of the thneed. Once again, the Lorax pops out to stop him from making any more progress on chopping down the trees, and tells him that because of the thneed, there is a shortage of Truffula fruit, which the tiny bears called Bar-ba-loots need to eat. He also informs that the factory is polluting both the air and water, causing the Swomee-Swans and Humming-Fish to suffer. All the animals are sent away for a better life, and soon after, the last Truffula tree is chopped down. The factory is out of business, and the entire area around him is nothing but a giant wasteland. The Lorax disappears soon after. Years later, the Once-ler is telling the story to a younger child,

in hopes of recreating the land into the way it was. Iowa, America, and the entire rest of the world may come to this, if we don’t let huge factories push us around. Regardless of political identity, we must admit that global warming and huge pollution problems are very much real and scary. Just image the world the Once-ler created, twenty years from now, decaying plant life, more and more animal going extinct, and our air become almost unbreathable. Once one species dies off in an ecosystem, it’s bound to throw off the entire communities that are within it, possibly creating even more organisms to go extinct or endangered due to different predators in the area being thrown off. Our future kids now must try to fix what we created because we were too stupid to fix this, if it’s even possible at that point. If people just took the time to recycle materials, we can help prevent this from happening. Even composting leftover plant and animal material or food would be better than a landfill, which can cause pollution in a water system nearby if it leaks, but obviously, you’ll have uneducated people insist that global warming is a myth, and that we shouldn’t care what way dispose our garbage and other hazardous waste.
Waste in the air can be just as deadly as waste on the ground if it’s not taken care of correctly.

Compounds such as Formaldehyde, Carbon Dioxide, Nitrogen Dioxide, and other terrible compounds can cause cancer, limit oxygen, cause acid rain, and other side effects. Not to mention, all these gases will be collecting in the atmosphere, causing the greenhouse effect. While the greenhouse effect isn’t all that bad, considering it helps regulate the world, too much of it could potentially make earth unlivable. Limiting emissions from burning fossil fuel, particle board, and smoking, could help immensely in the tide against global

warming.
Polluting the water is, if not, the worst of all three. Considering that all of our fresh water is only about 2.5% of all the total water on earth, we need stop pollution. It’s something that we not even be aware of, but certain stuff we do can affect the water. Running a car wash could easily pollute a nearby stream or river, due to all the chemicals used in cleaning the car. Another could be washing grease down the sink, as this could cause problems in treatment centers. Imagine if animals drank this water right before it was treated, they could get hurt, and potentially die. Not only that, the fish in the water obviously live in it, meaning, poisoned water could obviously kill them.