Tragedy Of The Commons: Movie Analysis

Tragedy of the Commons is the idea of when a public resource is taken advantage of and is used to near or complete depletion. Dr. Seuss’ 1972 TV movie, The Lorax exemplifies ideas from The Tragedy of the Commons. These ideas include putting pollution into nature is just as bad as taking something out, human nature to breed and give birth to an exuberant amount of children, and then there is the impossible human thought of making infinite things out of a finite world.
The Lorax portrays the idea of putting pollution into nature by showing how it affects the living creatures in the environment. There are 3 main creatures who inhabit the land in the Lorax. The creatures of the water are the Humming-Fish, the creatures of the land are the Brown Bar-Ba-Loots, and the creatures of the air are the Swomee-Swans. All of these creatures rely on the environment that the Onceler is trying to destroy, whether it be their home or the way that they eat. The argument can be made that there was only one voice telling them to stop all this …show more content…
Infinite power, money, food, love, etc. There is something about humans that make it so they think that nothing good ends. However it is impossible to have anything infinite in a world where everything is finite. This is how the Onceler mind worked in The Lorax. He thought there were endless Truffula trees and just kept cutting them down. He was not aware about the finite number of them until it was too late and there were no more Truffula trees. And often taking advantage of a finite source comes from the freedom to do so. In the words of Garrett Hardin “Freedom in a commons brings ruin to all.” Because people can do it, they will do it. This can be fixed if people learn to limit themselves. Instead of having as much as they can, just take one or as much as they need instead of how much they want. It all comes from people having the discipline and learn to apply their lives to