by Peter Lehner, via NRDC’s Switchboard

“The Lorax” opened [two weeks ago] in theaters.

Back in 1972, one year after the book came out, a young law professor from USC named Christopher Stone wrote an influential article, called “Should Trees Have Standing?” Stone argued that trees and other natural resources should have rights (e.g. to exist) and that environmental groups should be entitled to speak for them and to present their claims in court. In a legal sense, this would mean that trees do have standing.

Dr. Seuss’s title character, of course, famously stated (again, and again): “I am the Lorax. I speak for the trees.” Did the Lorax predict Stone’s paper? Did Stone read Seuss?

The same year as Stone’s article, Justice Douglas of the Supreme Court argued in a famous dissent to Sierra Club v. Morton that trees and other natural resources should have legal rights. Soon after, with the Clean Water Act of 1972 and CERCLA of 1980, Congress finally granted legal rights to natural resources —albeit in different language from the plainspoken Lorax’s.

Under the “natural resource damages” provisions of these laws, governments can sue for compensation for injury to natural resources—on behalf of those resources. Most tellingly, the law says that governments, in so doing, are acting as “trustees” for natural resources, not suing in their own right as governments. Moreover, the law requires that all recoveries be spent on the resource itself; the government cannot spend natural resource damages, say, on roads or schools. The money belongs to the resource, not to the government.

“Trustee,” importantly, is very specific term used in law to describe a situation where an entity has a right of its own but cannot speak for itself (e.g. an infant or a disabled person) on behalf of that right.  The Lorax, again, seemed to be invoking this principle when he said: “I speak for the trees, for the trees have no tongues.” (And I’m asking you, sir, at the top of my lungs… What’s that THING you’ve made out of my Truffula tuft?)

So, while the Lorax is a parable (and perhaps now a commercialization of a parable), there is still a profound legal issue beneath the colorful pictures.

Peter Lehner is Executive Director of the Natural Resources Defense Council. This piece was originally published at NRDC’s Switchboard.

Related Post:

• The Lorax Speaks For The Trees — Get Over It Conservatives

The Lorax was #1 at the box office for the second straight week. That dismayed conservatives, no doubt, who dissed the movie because of its anti-pollution, anti-unsustainability message. But it’s no surprise to anyone who actually saw the entertaining movie based on the Dr. Seuss classic.

But “whoever was in charge of promoting the film either didn’t get the message, or didn’t care,” as Kate Sheppard of Mother Jones has explained:

… the movie is being used to promote a new gasoline-powered crossover SUV from Mazda. Mazda is partnering with the film and the National Education Association for the Read Across America program. The automobile maker has agreed to give a $1,000 donation to 21 schools in 20 cities to support their libraries, and an additional $25 every time a kid convinces their parents to go take a Mazda for a test drive.

The most glaring indicator that the marketing department is out of touch with the film is that it includes a musical number from the Once-ler about how capitalism is awesome and everyone needs a Thneed, which plays over a scene of his company decimating the landscape with all its biggering and biggering. It includes a flash of a billboard featuring an image of the Lorax, who is definitely not happy about this situation, sporting a Thneed under the headline “Lorax approved!” Somehow, the irony was lost on the marketing department, which has backed a long list of 70 “Lorax-approved” launch partners.

There’s also an ironic mention in the movie that 5% of the environment-destroying corporate profits go to charity

Cartoonist Ruben Bolling created this humorous strip on the Lorax today:

Take your kids to see The Lorax.

I took my 5-year-old daughter and she loved it. Despite the best efforts of Fox News to smear the movie, The Lorax is doing very well at the box office — $70 million opening weekend (better than other Dr. Seuss movies) and “strong midweek numbers” — for a reason. It’s entertaining.

There is a great closing song, “Let It Grow,” about letting the Once-ler’s last Truffula Seed grow into a tree (if you don’t know who the Once-ler is or what he did to every last Truffula tree in his self-destructive quest to make and sell Thneeds, the movie probably isn’t for you). The online remix of the song doesn’t do it justice, so you’ll just have to take your kids to see the movie.

Fox News’s Lou Dobbs complains Hollywood’s goal is to “indoctrinate our children” — one of his guests claims the goal is to create “occu-toddlers“! Apparently it’s okay for conservatives to push a “Secret, Corporate-Funded Plan To Teach Children That Climate Change Is A Hoax.” But a movie based on a classic children’s story — that’s out of bounds.

Funny how Dobbs attacks Hollywood and the fictional Lorax — “a tree-smooching commie” – rather than Dr. Seuss, who wrote the book. Yes, the movie expands on the book, but doesn’t make it any stronger. The book itself has a strong message, though it isn’t anti-business per se, merely anti-unsustainable business.

It’s safe to say that anyone shocked that the movie has a strong environmental message has never read the book. The Lorax speaks for the trees.

What is particularly amusing is how the reviewer for Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal reinterprets the story to turn the Once-ler into an “entrepreneur” — and the Lorax into a failed environmentalist — in his negative review “The Bad! Bad! Bad! Biggering of Dr. Seuss“:

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