The Lorax

I am an environmentalist. I have been since I was a child. While others had stickers of cartoon characters on their notebooks., I had national park and endangered species stickers on mine. I read all I could about animals and worried about pollution. I also hugged trees.

To this day I still hug trees. Their strong roots and branches reaching for the sky are the perfect metaphor for our own human existence. And it all began with a simple book about a strange little creature called the Lorax.

I read Dr. Seuss’s “The Lorax” as a child as many people did. I felt his pain as the industrialized factory chopped down the truffula trees. When the factory is operating at full production, the pollution from it ruins the water and the air, driving away the fish and birds. More and more people come to the once beautiful valley in search of the money they can make off of the thneeds made from the trees. What was once beautiful becomes a dry barren wasteland destroyed by senseless destruction driven by greed.

To this day, the image of the Lorax stomping his feet and telling the Onceler to stop what he is doing mirrors the frustration felt by many who care about the environment. Slow down, don’t take it all, give back and care for the earth. Don’t take it all, keep that one truffula tree seed to try to begin again.

I and others like me learned that lesson. Bans were put on whaling before we lost them all. Forests where pandas live were granted protection. The last California condors were brought in from the wild and bred back to a level where they could be released to fly free and raise more condors.

Yet greed and destruction still reign over the planet. Global warming, air quality alerts and undrinkable water are in the news almost daily. Perhaps we need to listen to the Lorax once more. Unless someone cares a lot, we are all doomed. Perhaps it should be unless we all care some. If we all do a little each day, we can save the valley and the birds and the fish will return. And perhaps, one day we will see the Lorax sitting in the shade of a truffula tree. Until that day happens, I will continue to be an environmentalist and carry on the work of my beloved Lorax.