The 2012 film The Lorax is a movie about the exploitation of natural resources. It tells the story of a young boy names Ted who sets out to find a real tree. In his search, he discovers that the land he lives in was once bountiful and resource rich until one day human greed took over. The Once-ler, an aspiring businessman, began to take advantage of the surrounding environment in order to create his company. With the help of his family, he begins cutting down all the native Truffula trees and ignores all the warnings of those around him. Instead, he focuses on growing his business until eventually he depleted the entire forest of trees, leaving nothing but a baren wasteland and industrial waste behind. In doing so, he destroyed the entire ecosystem and set the environment back years. The Lorax is a satirical tale of warning us against the overexploitation of the earth’s natural resources. The animated children’s movie discusses mature themes covered in our course such as the extinction crisis and loss of biodiversity, habitat fragmentation and loss, and sustainable forestry. In the film, we see how deforestation impacts not only the surrounding environments, but how it also has a lasting effect on the entire ecosystem as a whole. All of the native species living in or near the trees that were being cut down have vanished and the air has become so polluted and toxic that it created a whole new industry, selling fresh air. The movie allows for an exaggerated outside view of how deforestation and overexploitation of resources affects our own Earth and gives viewers a real wakeup call about human impacts on the environment.
Applied Plant Ecology Winter 2020 