Petition Protests "The Lorax" Movie's Watered-Down Message

As I've pointed out in the past, the new movie based on inspired by with the same name as the Dr. Seuss book The Lorax looks like it will downplay the book's ecological lessons. Kate Sheppard reports at the Mother Jones Blue Marble blog that some elementary school students have started a Change.org petition protesting the movie's commercialized storyline. The Green Miles is especially proud since the students are from Brookline, MA, where I went to high school. Here's the link to the petition.

New Movie to Poochify "The Lorax," Rid Story of Downer Moral Lessons?

Remember that Easter Bunny from the Illumination Entertainment movie Hop that crapped jelly beans? If that bunny ate a copy of the book The Lorax, Illumination Entertainment's new film based on adapted from vaguely inspired by the Dr. Seuss classic might be what would come out the other end.

Grist's David Roberts reviews The Lorax trailer, predicting "movie to insult all that is good, holy." The new story seems to make the destruction of the area's ecosystem less of a devastating man-made catastrophe of choice and more of a minor inconvenience that can be exploited to score with treehugging babes. As for The Lorax himself, he seems to be Poochified - less wise than wise-cracking, a punchline also ready to punch out anyone who disagrees with him.

Considering you can buy the book for less than the price of a movie ticket, seems like you should skip the film and re-read The Lorax instead.

And if you really want to embrace the book's moral - "Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It's not." - RSVP for the Tar Sands Action at the White House on Sunday.

UPDATE 2/23: It just keeps getting worse - as Mother Jones' Kate Sheppard reports, the Lorax is now a spokesman for an SUV.

Harry Potter Gets Greener

One of my environmental pet peeves? When someone is described as "going green" for taking only a small environmental step, as if installing compact fluorescent bulbs or planting trees or getting 5% of your power from renewable energy makes you The Lorax or something.

So while I don't think the following qualifies Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows as green, the National Wildlife Federation points out it's a step in the right direction:

After hearing from outraged citizens across the country when they didn't publish book six of J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter on recycled paper, Scholastic has changed its ways! For the first printing of book seven, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows...

* 65 percent of the paper used will have the Forest Stewardship Council stamp of approval -- meaning it comes from forestlands that are managed in an environmentally responsible way. Certification assures that much of the paper for this book is not harming the birds and other wildlife dependent upon Canada's intact Boreal Forest--a critical shield against global warming.

* 30 percent of the paper will be made out of recycled content -- another big step forward in the book publishing business!

E Magazine breaks down exactly what that means:

This monstrous paper order of 16,700 tons will do a lot more than may initially meet the eye. By switching to 30 percent recycled paper, just the English-language editions of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows alone will save: 197,685 trees, an area 2.5 times the size of New York’s Central Park, or a whole lot of Whomping Willows in Hogwarts terms; 72,074,421 gallons of water, enough to fill 218 Olympic sized pools or make 6.3 trillion batches of Polyjuice Potion; 17,364,063 pounds of greenhouse gas emissions, equal to taking 1,577 cars off the road for a year or stopping 8,420 dragon burps; 9,255,366 pounds of solid waste, which is the weight of 4,999 full-grown elephants or 2,364 fully-grown dragons like Norbert; 137,609 million BTUs of electricity, enough energy to power 1,512 homes for a year and equivalent to the energy in 154 million lightning bolts. (Source: Markets Initiative, using the Environmental Defense Paper Calculator.)

You can thank Potter's publisher here. But you should also encourage them to go even further. 100,000 copies of the deluxe edition will be printed on 100 percent recycled paper. Why not every book? And why not print the book using soy-based ink?

Now that would be environmental wizardry. Oh, come on, you didn't think I'd go a whole blog post about Harry Potter without some cheesy magic reference, did you?