Illustration by Aleks Sennwald

Seven days a week, I read bad news about the environment, so it takes quite a lot to nudge my personal compassion meter, which I imagine as a Seussian contraption with boxing-glove hands. The spewing of fossil fuels in the Gulf of Mexico does the trick (just ask my 11-year-old daughter, Lucy, to whom I obsessively read the updates), while word of yet another leaking landfill liner excites exactly nothing. I imagine I'm not alone in my relative imperturbability.

In 1971, however, an illustrated children's story had the power to pull readers of all ages up short, to stir their souls, and to spur them to action. The Lorax, by Dr. Seuss, describes a greedy entrepreneur named the Once-ler, who systematically annihilates the Truffala forest, home to brown-coated Bar-ba-loots, Swomee Swans, and Humming Fish. From Truffala tufts the Once-ler stitches Thneeds, a unitard-like garment that "everyone, everyone, everyone needs."

The Lorax, a bewhiskered creature who claims to speak for the trees, protests the Once-ler's actions, but the Once-ler, of course, won't listen. The creatures eventually leave, the Lorax, too, and the scenery fades to darker tones. Finally, a child appears. He listens to the now-repentant Once-ler's tale and, in return, receives the last Truffala seed. "Grow a forest," the Once-ler tells the boy. "Protect it from axes that hack. Then the Lorax and all of his friends may come back."

The Lorax was written in the same post–Rachel Carson, flaming–Cuyahoga crucible that resulted in the first Earth Day and passage of the Endangered Species, Clean Air, and Clean Water acts. Today it is a nearly unassailable touchstone of the environmental movement. Rereading the book to Lucy almost 40 years on, I find the story as charming and affecting as ever. (Those poor Bar-ba-loots, who are seriously cute!) But things seem to have gotten so much more complicated with the passage of time. Back before battle fatigue set in, we had some faith that Thneed producers and Thneed consumers would, given sufficient education, reform. This past summer, watching impotently as the oil gushed and our leaders killed meaningful climate legislation, such responses seemed wildly insufficient. We may care as much as ever, but we no longer trust that our actions matter.

And yet: I recently asked Lucy what she made of The Lorax. Being steeped in environmental issues, she may be an atypical sixth-grader.She knows what 350 parts per million is all about. She avoids meat, extinguishes lights, and gives the hairy eyeball to single-use packaging. She even taught her cat to come when she coos, "Who puts mining waste in rivers?" (Thus proving that cats privilege tone over content.)"The book's message," she said, "is that nothing is going to get any better unless you step up and others follow.It's everybody's responsibility -- we all made it go bad. Everyone's bought something like a Thneed once."

"Once?" I wanted to shout, thinking of her enormous collection of stuffed animals, but instead just nodded.

The Lorax has had its critics over the years: parents in logging communities tried to ban it from schools; the wood products industry sponsored a counter-Lorax, The Truax, in which an angry tree hugger faces off against a wise tree logger. A subtler critique comes from those who see salvation in collective action against policies and systems that despoil the earth, rather than in easy, consumer-oriented decisions (paper or plastic?) and end-of-the-pipe Band-Aids (tree planting, perhaps). Pluck plastic bottles from a beach, by all means, but don't forget to fight for bottle bills, which would keep containers off the beach in the first place.

Do I expect Lucy to press for institutional change? Hell, yes. Do I expect her to plant native trees in appropriate habitat and change lightbulbs too? Yes to everything, including an annual reading of The Lorax. Perhaps we should all revisit Dr. Seuss to remind ourselves that the environmental movement began with emotional appeals, not informational entreaties. Hold the hockey-stick graphs of climate change, but keep the photos of oil-stained pelicans coming. To the next generation of leaders -- children schooled to believe they can make a difference -- they're as powerful as displaced Bar-ba-loots.