system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
[The Lorax] How did the Once-ler not notice he was running out of trees until literally the moment the very last one was chopped down?

In the old animated version, he even yells at the Lorax about how he has more long-term plans to keep producing thneeds and "biggering" *immediately* before the final tree is fallen, which he *immediately* takes notice of and realizes was the very last one.

A lot of people seem to think that the story is against using natural resources for capitalism altogether, but considering this apparent glaring plot hole, I've always felt that it validates the interpretation that it is merely against being *recklessly, stupidly shortsighted* about it; given how immensely popular thneeds *clearly* were, the Once-ler could easily have gotten away with slowing down their production and the involved tree-whacking while selling each one at a higher price, enough so that a new generation of trees would have grown by the time all the initial ones were gone, thus benefitting both the environment *and* his own business.
gpt
You are exactly correct about the message, and about why this isn't any sort of hole in the story.  The message of the Lorax is about care, it's only the story that happens to be about the environment.  

People seem to take a very surface reading of the story. There's a good guy, The Lorax, who wants to help the animals. There's a bad-guy, the Onceler, who ignores his warnings. And then things go to shit as a result. But that is wrong. 

The Lorax is introduced as basically a jerk. He yells, he interrupts, he's impatient, and ---in the very first thing he does---he's wrong. He says that Sneeds won't sell, but, in fact, they do sell almost immediately. 

Likewise, despite his shortsightedness, the Onceler has plenty of virtues. He's hardworking, dedicated, smart, inventive and our main character. And he's sad. He doesn't see what happened as a great victory, he didn't want to destroy the world around him. His sin isn't stupidity or laziness or evil, it's that he didn't pay attention to other things when there was still time.  

And the key is the word.  The Lorax doesn't leave a Truffela statue in his wake, or a warning about protecting the earth or not polluting.  His final word is "UNLESS." And, in his moment of epiphany, the onceler realizes that 

>“Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot,
Nothing is going to get better. It's not.” 

This is a message that precedes replanting that last Truffela seed and pining for the return of the friends of the Lorax. It's a message about paying attention to the world around you and about WORKING to make sure that the world is the way you actually want it to be.  

Remember, the Lorax isn't quite a hero.  His limit is in his name.  He speaks for the trees, but he doesn't do for them. He can only remind us that they exist, but we are the ones that have to decide to care about them. And, unless we do, then of course that will mean ending up like the Onceler, victims of our own success. 

Now, of course, part of the idea of the story is that you should care about these things, that there's value in these things, but that's taken as a given, even by the Onceler.