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Beautiful Free Images & Pictures | Unsplash

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Beautiful, free images and photos that you can download and use for any project. Better than any royalty free or stock photos.

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Mazda's decision to partner with Illumination's 2012 animated film "The Lorax" quickly became a PR nightmare

I am the Lorax. I speak for the SUVs.
Photo: Mazda/Illumination Entertainment

Theodor Seuss Geisel, better known by his alias of Dr. Seuss, published more than 60 books during his career. However, Seuss' personal favorite story was The Lorax, an environmental fable about a small, orange creature who "speaks for the trees." The eponymous Lorax attempts to persuade the Once-Ler, an entrepreneur who creates "Thneed" products using the nearby Truffula Trees, from clearing the forest and disrupting the local environment.

In the years following Geisel's passing, many movie studios have attempted to bring his stories to life on the big screen, the most recent of which to do so being Illumination Entertainment. Back in 2012, Illumination set out to adapt The Lorax as a movie, already regarded as something of a controversial decision.

In order to promote the movie, Illumination Entertainment launched a series of marketing campaigns which would feature the Lorax and other characters in the film. One of the companies that Illumination partnered with was Mazda.

Unfortunately for both Mazda and Illumination, the ensuing controversy was one they were unprepared for.

Even More Seuss Stories: The Various Vehicular Contraptions of the Cat in the Hat

Mazda's advertisements featuring the Lorax focused on the Mazda CX-5 and the company's efficient SKYACTIV technology. The new engine helped CX-5 achieve 26 mpg in the city and up to 33 mpg on the highway, rather efficient for a vehicle in its class.

In fact, Mazda found the fuel-efficient ratings so impressive that they decided the Mazda CX-5 would certainly be approved by the Lorax. Thus, during the commercial in question, the CX-5 is awarded the "Truffula Tree Seal of Approval" while it traverses a valley full of Truffula trees.

You can watch the ad in question down below:

Needless to say, audience members were not receptive to the advertising campaign. Media outlets like The Atlantic and celebrities like Stephen Colbert decried the ad's use of the environmental activist Lorax to promote a gas-powered SUV. On YouTube, the television spot received more than 900 dislikes, compared to its 100 likes.

Mazda's reaction to the negative feedback certainly didn't help matters. Here's what Don Romano, Mazda's chief marketing officer at the time, had to say:

"If people think that everything's going to change overnight, that's just naive. It's not going to happen that way. It's going to happen through incremental changes and constant improvement. I think Dr. Seuss would be quite proud of that progress and the fact that we're taking that step."

Efficient Mazda Models: Mazda Says Next-Generation SKYACTIV Engines Will Undercut EV Emissions

To be fair, Mazda did follow up with several charitable acts, such as donating money to public schools. However, by that point, the damage had already been done. Today, Mazda's "Lorax-approved" CX-5 commercial is regarded by many advertising experts to be one of the worst movie tie-in campaigns in recent history.

As for The Lorax film itself, reviews were quite mixed, with a 54 percent approval rating among critics on Rotten Tomatoes. Nevertheless, the movie was a financial hit, earning $348.8 million on a $70 million budget.

Ironically enough, during one of The Lorax 's song sequences, the Lorax is tricked into promoting a product, which is dubbed "Lorax-approved." Whether anybody at Illumination or Mazda recognized the irony of the situation is unclear.

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Remember That Time Mazda Used "The Lorax" to Promote Its New SUV? - The News Wheel

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Theodor Seuss Geisel, better known by his alias of Dr. Seuss, published more than 60 books during his career. However, Seuss' personal favorite story was The Lorax, an environmental fable about a small, orange creature who "speaks for the trees."

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Vehicle pollutants harm our health and contain greenhouse gases that cause climate change. Burning gasoline and diesel fuel creates harmful byproducts like nitrogen dioxide, carbon monoxide, hydrocarbons, benzene, and formaldehyde. In addition, vehicles emit carbon dioxide, the most common human-caused greenhouse gas.

The good news is that you can reduce pollution from motor vehicles. Driving the cleanest vehicle you can afford and making everyday choices to drive less and drive smarter can make a big difference.

Drive less

Reducing the amount of miles you drive is the best way to reduce air pollution from motor vehicles. If you can, try walking or biking to your destination. You will emit zero pollutants. For longer distances, try riding the bus or train. If public transportation is not an option where you live, you may be able to carpool with someone who lives nearby. You will pollute less and spend less money at the pump.

Drive a cleaner vehicle

Drive the most fuel efficient vehicle that meets your needs. Burning less fuel means emitting less of the harmful by products of combustion. There are many hybrid models and even all-electric vehicles on the market. Due to Washington's adoption of the more protective Clean Car standards, even traditional gasoline vehicles available in Washington run cleaner.

Electric, hybrid, and even compact fuel-efficient gas vehicles may not meet all drivers' needs. While the initial cost of some these vehicles may have put them out of reach for many of us, as they become more common, prices are becoming much more affordable. If your job or lifestyle requires a larger vehicle, you can compare the fuel economy of available vehicles. Driving the most efficient vehicle you can get reduces pollution and saves you money.

Avoid idling

An idling vehicle gets zero miles to the gallon. Contrary to popular myth, cars do not need to "warm up" to run well in cold weather. Restarting your vehicle will not use more fuel than letting it run. Restarting your vehicle is unlikely to wear out the starter and other parts.

Maintain your vehicle

Regardless of what you drive, you can make sure your car runs as clean and efficiently as possible. Maintain your vehicle and keep it in good repair. Follow your owner's manual and make sure you schedule regular oil changes and other maintenance.

Newer vehicles have very complex emission controls to keep them running as clean as possible. If any of these controls are not functioning as designed, your vehicle will pollute more than it should. A check engine light on your dashboard means your vehicle is not operating as designed and needs repairs or maintenance. You should take your vehicle to a qualified automotive technician.

Keeping your tires properly inflated makes your vehicle run more efficiently and burn less fuel. You will find the correct tire pressure for your vehicle in your owner's manual.

Drive smarter

The way you drive can also influence how much pollution comes from your vehicle. Observing posted speed limits is one way to reduce pollution, and it's safer. Driving faster burns more fuel and emits more air pollutants. Accelerating gradually also burns less fuel. Getting a vehicle moving from a complete stop uses the most energy, so go easy on the accelerator. Try to anticipate the road ahead and avoid racing from red light to red light. Instead, strive to maintain a steady speed with less stop and go driving.

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Reducing car pollution - Washington State Department of Ecology

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Vehicle pollutants harm our health and contain greenhouse gases that cause climate change. Burning gasoline and diesel fuel creates harmful byproducts like nitrogen dioxide, carbon monoxide, hydrocarbons, benzene, and formaldehyde. In addition, vehicles emit carbon dioxide, the most common human-caused greenhouse gas. The good news is that you can reduce pollution from motor vehicles.

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Elon Musk says he plans to send 1 million people to Mars by 2050 by launching 3 Starship rockets every day and creating ‘a lot of jobs’ on the red planet

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Elon Musk recently shared details on Twitter about his plans to send 1 million people to Mars by 2050. The SpaceX founder said there would be “a lot of jobs”

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Gasoline use contributes to air pollution

Gasoline is a toxic and highly flammable liquid. The vapors given off when gasoline evaporates and the substances produced when gasoline is burned (carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides, particulate matter, and unburned hydrocarbons) contribute to air pollution. Burning gasoline also produces carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas.

Laws like the Clean Air Act reduce environmental effects

Most consumers use gasoline in cars, light trucks, and motorcycles, but they also use it in small aircraft, boats and other watercraft, and landscaping and construction equipment. Some of the environmental laws in the United States focus on reducing pollution from these sources.

Required emissions control devices and cleaner burning engines
Emissions control devices on passenger vehicles were required beginning in 1976. In the 1990s, the EPA established emissions standards for other types of vehicles and for engines in gasoline-burning, non-road equipment.²

Banned leaded gasoline for vehicles
Lead in gasoline proved to be a public health concern. The move away from leaded gasoline began in 1976, when catalytic converters were installed in new vehicles to reduce the emissions of toxic air pollutants. Vehicles equipped with a catalytic converter cannot operate on leaded gasoline because the presence of lead in the fuel damages the catalytic converter. Leaded gasoline for vehicles was completely phased out of the U.S. fuel system by 1996. Leaded aviation gasoline is allowed for piston-engine aircraft. The U.S. government is supporting research on alternative, lead-free fuels for those types of aircraft.³

Required reformulated gasoline
Beginning in 1995, the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990 required cleaner-burning reformulated gasoline to reduce air pollution in metropolitan areas that had significant ground-level ozone pollution.⁴

Required ultra-low sulfur gasoline
As of January 1, 2017, refiners are required to supply gasoline with 97% less sulfur content than the gasoline made in 2004. Gasoline with lower sulfur content reduces emissions from old and new vehicles and is necessary for advanced vehicle emission control devices to work properly.⁵

Reduced gasoline leaks
Gasoline leaks happen at gas stations every day. As people fill up their gas tanks, gasoline drips from the nozzle onto the ground and vapors leak from open gas tanks into the air. Gasoline leaks can also happen in pipelines or in underground storage tanks, where they can't be seen. Beginning in 1990, all underground storage tanks had to be replaced by tanks with double lining. The double lining provides an additional safeguard for preventing leaks.⁶

Methyl tertiary butyl ether (MTBE), one of the chemicals added to gasoline to help it burn cleaner, is toxic, and a number of states started banning the use of MTBE in gasoline in the late 1990s. By 2007, the U.S. refining industry had voluntarily stopped using MTBE when making reformulated gasoline for sale in the United States. MTBE was replaced with ethanol, which is not toxic. ⁷
Last updated: December 29, 2022

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Gasoline and the environment - U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA)

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Environmental issues, effects, and impacts associated with gasoline production, storage, and use.

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he screenshots began to circulate on Delhi WhatsApp groups last week, captioned with varying expressions of disbelief. Having checked the air quality index, something of a sadistic morning ritual among residents of India's capital, most could not believe their eyes.

Gone was the familiar menacing red banner, indicating how each intake of breath is really just a toxic blast on the lungs, replaced instead by a healthy, cheerful green. Could it really be that Delhi's pollution levels now fell into the category of ... "good"? "It's positively alpine!" exclaimed one message.

A nationwide lockdown imposed across India on 24 March to stop the spread of the coronavirus - the largest lockdown of its kind attempted anywhere - has led to widespread chaos and suffering, especially among the country's 300 million poor. Yet in Delhi, the world's most polluted city, it has also resulted in some of the freshest air the capital has seen in decades.

It is a lockdown silver lining being repeated across the world, as toxic megacities such as Bangkok, Beijing, São Paulo and Bogotá, where varying coronavirus restrictions have been imposed, all reported an unprecedented decline in pollution. Yet it is countered with one cruel irony: with most residents of these cities strictly confined to their homes, few have any way to appreciate this newly fresh air, except through an open window or a during speedy trip to the supermarket.

In Delhi, air quality index (AQI) levels are usually a severe 200 on a good day (anything above 25 is deemed unsafe by World Health Organization). During peak pollution periods last year they soared well into a life-threatening 900 and sometimes off the measurable scale. But as Delhi's 11m registered cars were taken off the roads and factories and construction were ground to a halt, AQI levels have regularly fallen below 20. The skies are suddenly a rare, piercing blue. Even the birdsong seems louder.

Dr Shashi Tharoor, a politician and author who has been vocal on environmental issues, said he hoped that it was a wake-up call. "The blissful sight of blue skies and the joy of breathing clean air provides just the contrast to illustrate what we are doing to ourselves the rest of the time," said Tharoor. "Today the typical Delhi AQI hovers around 30 and one blissful afternoon, after a spurt of rain, it dropped to 7."

"Seven," Tharoor exclaimed again in disbelief. "In Delhi! Pure joy!".

Tharoor's sister Smita, who was visiting from the UK when the lockdown was imposed and found herself stuck in Delhi, was equally effusive. As someone with asthma, she said the city's air, normally thick with pollution, was usually a health nightmare. But now: "The air is clear, the skies are blue. I see the evening stars with clarity and hear the chirruping of excited birds at this unexpected bonus they have received."

While India's powerful car lobby has long disputed that cars are a major cause of Delhi's pollution, Sunita Narain, director of the Centre for Science and Environment, said the lockdown and resulting rapid drop in pollution showed once and for all just what a polluting role vehicles had in the city.

Narain also stressed that while she wished Delhi was like this "all the time", adding: "I don't want people to say 'Oh, environmentalists are celebrating this lockdown:' we are not. This is not the solution. But whatever the new normal is post-Covid-19, we have to make sure we take this breath of fresh air and think about the serious efforts we need to deal with pollution in Delhi."

It is not just Delhi experiencing the clearest skies in years. As pollution dropped to its lowest level in three decades this week this week, residents of Jalandhar in Punjab woke up to an incredible sight in the distance: the Dhauladhar mountain range in Himachal Pradesh. The peaks, which are over 120 miles away, had not been sighted on the Punjab horizon for almost 30 years.

It is the absence of cars on some of the world's most congested roads that seems to be making the most crucial differences. Thailand's capital, Bangkok, which only last month had closed schools because the pollution got so bad, has experienced a similar transformation in the air since partial lockdown, mainly due to the fall in road traffic. "We can see quite a big gap between the air quality standard that we have [compared with this time last year]," says Tara Buakamsri, Thailand director for Greenpeace.

But residents of Bangkok lamented how the places to enjoy the fresh air were swiftly disappearing. Playgrounds, sporting grounds and even parks, a rare source of solace in the bustling, intensely urban environs of Bangkok, have all now been shut. "I feel sad for the old people who use the park to hang out and meet friends. I think they will be so sad at home," said Nantawan Wangudomsuk, 31, a producer who used to run in the parks.

Across South America's most populous city of São Paulo, ground zero of Brazil's brewing coronavirus crisis, notorious traffic queues and smoggy horizons are also giving way to calm streets and clearer skies.

An aerial view of empty street on the first day of lockdown in São Paulo, Brazil. Photograph: Reuters

During weekday rush-hour, downtown São Paulo's João Goulart elevated highway - nicknamed Minhocão, the Big Worm - normally heaves with traffic as thousands of cars cram four narrow lanes and beeping motorbikes weave through daringly small spaces. But with the city's coronavirus lockdown, Minhocão now resembles a small-town avenue instead of a major road in a metropolis of 12 million people.

"The air is certainly better," said Daniel Guth,an urban mobility consultant. "I've felt the improvement in air quality both as a cyclist and as a quarantined citizen," he laughed. "We should use this as a moment to reflect on what transport methods we should prioritise when this crisis is over."

Share your stories

If you have been affected or have any information, we'd like to hear from you. You can get in touch by filling in the form below, anonymously if you wish or contact us via WhatsApp by clicking here or adding the contact +44(0)7766780300. Only the Guardian can see your contributions and one of our journalists may contact you to discuss further.

Despite being under lockdown, many Paulistas, as the city's residents are known, are still finding ways to enjoy the cleaner air, taking to windows and apartment balconies for nightly pot-banging protests against Brazil's far-right President Jair Bolsonaro, who has repeatedly dismissed the coronavirus as just "a little flu".

Empty roads in Bogota on 21 March, after quarantine was imposed on the city. Photograph: Raúl Arboleda/AFP via Getty

Bogotá, the sprawling mountaintop capital of Colombia, is also usually choking with traffic so bad that officials occasionally ban cars for entire days. But since the nationwide coronavirus quarantine took hold on 24 March, exhaust fumes have fallen as the city ground to a halt. Yet the newly fresh air has been taunting Bogotá's residents, who are allowed to leave home only for food and medicines, not even a daily dose of outdoor exercise. "Without a doubt this pandemic is helping us improve air quality," said Carolina Urrutia, Bogotá's district environment secretary. "With the city shut down, we are able to focus our efforts on other environmental factors."

An avenue in Cali, Colombia, on 1 April. Photograph: Luis Robayo/AFP via Getty Images

Cali, Colombia's third city and usually a smokey, congested metropolis, has also been spared from the usual forest fires, allowing residents to breathe fresher air. "The thick cloud that usually hangs over us has been lifted," said Christian Camilo Villa, an air quality activist and Cali resident. "The concern is that it will return when the quarantine ends."

Indeed, the fear among environmentalists and residents is that, rather than attempting to maintain the low levels of pollution in the world's biggest capitals, when industry and cars kick back into action post-lockdown, the situation will go back to square one, and perhaps even worsen, as people and industry attempt to make up for the lost months.

The signs from China, which is coming out of the other side of the coronavirus outbreak and where lockdowns are loosening up, are not positive. For the first four weeks after the Chinese new year holiday in late January, when the coronavirus outbreak was at its worst, pollution levels fell 25% across the country. But since early March, levels of nitrogen dioxide pollution have begun to inch back up as the country gets back to work with factories, businesses and power plants re-opening and traffic returning.

Lauri Myllyvirta, lead analyst for the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air, said: "The big question is whether government stimulus measures lead to pollution levels rebounding above the levels before the crisis, like happened after the 2008 financial crisis."

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'It's positively alpine!': Disbelief in big cities as air pollution falls

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he screenshots began to circulate on Delhi WhatsApp groups last week, captioned with varying expressions of disbelief. Having checked the air quality index, something of a sadistic morning ritual among residents of India's capital, most could not believe their eyes.

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SpaceX Rocket Launch Schedule - Space Launch Schedule

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View the SpaceX rocket launch schedule including SpaceX Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy launches. Get information about how to watch online or in person.

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picture 9

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This could be my front page picture for my Lorax-Mazda car

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This is one of the topic idea i had in mind.

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The New Gas Saving, 35MPG 2013 Mazda CX-5 SUV Stars in A Dr Suess -The Lorax Commercial