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the harms that his factory is doing as it grows—but these warnings do not cause him to reconsider his environmental policies but rather to shrug off the problems. Or, in other words, are there alternatives to economic growth? Third, why does the Once-ler ignore the long-term sustainability of his business? It seems he forgets that there are a finite number of Truffula Trees, and doesn’t plant any new ones. He allows the resources the business relies on to run out; his business is ruined, and the local environment has been permanently altered. Or, in other words, can attention to a longer time frame have positive impacts on both business and the environment? Such questions lie at the intersection of business ethics and environmental ethics—and might be seen as central to understanding our place on the planet.

Do You Need a Thneed?

The Once-ler begins his story by describing a beautiful place full of interesting animals, clean water, and fresh air—and, most importantly to him, Truffula Trees. The “Truffula tufts” are full of a soft fiber that the Once-ler knows he can knit into . . . well, a “Thneed.” This is an indescribable item with more “uses” than could ever be realistically useful.

It’s a shirt. It’s a sock. It’s a glove. It’s a hat.

But it has other uses. Yes far beyond that.

You can use it for carpets. For pillows! For sheets!

Or curtains! Or covers for bicycle seats! (Lorax)

From the production of the very first Thneed it seems fairly clear that the Thneed has no real use or value. It’s important to keep an open mind when reading a Dr. Seuss book, but we find it hard to imagine an object that could fulfill all these tasks and still be comfortable or practical while being used for any of these functions. The Lorax speaks for all of us, it seems, when he says that the Once-ler won’t sell a single Thneed. But immediately the Lorax is proven wrong. “For, just at that minute, a chap came along, / and he thought that the Thneed I had knitted was great. / He happily bought it for three ninety-eight” (Lorax). And although it seems that Thneeds become incredibly popular, we never do find out what they’re really any good for . . . just that people think that they’re “great.” The popularity of the Thneed, despite its uselessness, prompts us to ask a key question: are there some products that should not be made? Philosophically speaking, this question is usually turned around: Are there moral limits to our freedom to consume? Might there be some things that we should not want to buy? Many of us hope to follow Thoreau’s dictum and “simplify, simplify”—and we have probably all seen bumper stickers urging us to “live simply, that others may simply live” (a maxim attributed to Mahatma Gandhi). But why should we?

Drawing from the 2004 Worldwatch Institute report, Joseph DesJardins puts consumption patterns into stark perspective:

The wealthiest 25% of the world’s population consumes 58% of the energy, 45% of the meat and fish, 84% of the paper, and 87% of the vehicles, and accounts for 86% of the total private consumer expenditures. In contrast, the world’s poorest 25% consumes 24% of the energy, 5% of the meat and fish, 1% of the paper, and less than 1% of the vehicles, and accounts for only 1.3% of the total private consumer expenditures.2

Americans and Western Europeans make up a large part of the wealthiest quarter of the world’s population, and DesJardins argues that this huge disparity shows that we “consume too much” in three fundamental ways.3

First, our consumption patterns—the habits born of our “work and spend cycle”—are not in our best interests, so we consume too much “in a practical sense.” We are more likely to be obese, more likely to labor under a crushing debt load, and less likely to describe ourselves as happy than the rest of the world. Dr. Seuss doesn’t really tell us much about the practical impact of Thneed purchases on the chaps who buy them; because we understand something of how fads work, though, we might guess that some people are driven to distraction (at least!) by their