Dr. Seuss's classic story "The Lorax" is a well-known treatise on the effects of negative industrial environmental practises, and has inspired many excellent initiatives http://lorax.conservation.org/, http://www.loraxsociety.com/.
As I read "The Lorax" to my daughter last night (re-printed with recycled paper and vegetable inks of course), it hit me like a Super-Axe-Hacker that the subtext in the great Doctor's tale could be about sustainable business practises. As the Once-ler killed off the Truffula trees, he ravaged the local environment - perhaps irreparably (though that remains to be seen.... was there ever a sequel?).
However, as you may remember, the story ends with the promise that the Truffula trees can be re-established, if only the boy takes the last Truffula seed and cultivates a new forest.
"Plant a new Truffula. Treat it with care.
Give it clean water. And feed it fresh air.
Grow a forest. Protect it from axes that hack.
The suggestion is that the forest will live again, the animals will return, and everything will be fine again (which begs the question of why the hell the Once-ler didn't do the same thing years ago).
The sub-text that interests me is the fact that the Once-ler grew his "thneed" business at a rampant, unsustainable rate. The business depended entirely on the wild Truffula trees. He didn't diversify, investigate sustainable business growth strategies, nor did he investigate alternate production materials. He didn't even think to replant what he hacked down. He kept growing his business (under the burden of high debt, no doubt), until the primary component of thneed production was exhausted. He had no fallback - which killed the business (to say nothing of the forest and the environment).
The Once-ler wasn't just a bad person and a bad environmentalist - he was a horrible business person too. This is the part of the story that really interests me - and there are plenty of real-world examples of this kind of shoddy business practice (most of pre-Glastnost Soviet Union comes to mind...).
The Once-ler was a slave to immediate consumer demand, but he had no long-term vision, no strategic plan, and no apparent marketing plan. Crazy stuff. The story doesn't even mention the competitive textile magnate that likely planted a Truffula forest in China to fill the gap in thneed production when the Once-ler's business crashed... but I digress.
I love apparently simple parables like these. There can be so many layers - and so many lessons.
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