Opinion: AI is ‘The Thneed’ of the 21st Century

Youth Environmental Press Team

Dr. Seuss’ The Lorax (1971) is a classic children’s book that follows the Once-ler as he tells the story of his demand for wealth through a Thneed, his invention made from the tufts of Truffula Trees. The product destroys the once bountiful and joyful Truffula Valley, and causes more problems than it solves.

The Once-ler claims a Thneed is a “Fine-Something-That-All-People-Need.” Its potential uses include shirts, hats, sweaters, swimsuits, towels, carpets, and even jump ropes. The functions of a Thneed are not only vague, but entirely questionable, as they often contradict themselves. The same object that can be used as a sweater on a cold winter day also has the ability to magically become a stylish swimsuit for a pool party.

AI itself shows alarming parallels to the fictional knitted object in more ways than one. Today’s consumption of the technology is rapid and uncontrolled, with AI tools popping up almost everywhere in the digital landscape.

AI Overviews powered by Google Gemini appear at the top of search results to provide quick generated summaries. Spotify’s “Made For You” playlists and “Wrapped” year overviews use AI to analyze listener data and create personalized summaries and mixes for each user.

Unfortunately, AI isn’t just a useful tool that can make life easier or more fun, the negative impacts of becoming overreliant on AI far outweigh the benefits.

AI uses significant amounts of water to cool data centers as the models generate immense amounts of heat. Large facilities consume hundreds to millions of gallons of water per day varying based on location, technology, and the workload. According to scientists at the University of California, Riverside, every 100-word AI prompt entered into an AI model like ChatGPT uses around one bottle of water, or 519 milliliters. It doesn’t seem like much, but billions of people around the world enter questions or prompts into AI models every minute.

AI also emits significant amounts of greenhouse gases including carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide. According to Climate Impact Partners, researchers estimated that training GPT-3, a single AI model, emitted around 500 metric tons of carbon dioxide, the same amount as driving a car from New York to San Francisco 438 times.

“The reign of the Thneed ended with a destroyed ecosystem and a society no longer aware of the bright and hopeful world of the past.”

— Channing Sidders

The overconsumption of Thneeds in The Lorax led to all of the Truffula Trees being cut down, the environment polluted, and the animals forced out of their homes. Today, this environmental chaos isn’t a potential outcome; it is reality. Greenhouse gases already pollute Earth’s atmosphere, and AI adds to the load.

“The general public doesn’t realize the environmental impact and will ignore it,” biology teacher Jordan Fuglestad said. “Anytime something makes life easier, the general population is not going to want it to go away.”

While AI models like Google Gemini and ChatGPT can help explain challenging topics and reword answers, easy access can also lead students to cheat.

Since the introduction of ChatGPT in November 2022, student self-report surveys by Emmanuel College have shown that 70% to 80% of high school students and 50% to 70% of college undergraduates have cheated on assignments. While AI isn’t the only method of cheating for students, it is one of the most prevalent and easily accessible options.

“Some people could graduate high school with all A’s and a 4.0 GPA using just AI,” sophomore Polly Davies said. “That’s going to impact how a lot of leaders are shaped in the future because they didn’t do their research for their professional career.”

The future depends on society not becoming entirely reliant on AI technology. Learning and creativity shape the world because AI can’t on its own.

“[Writing] is based on your actual experiences and people’s actual emotions, which AI doesn’t fully comprehend,” sophomore aspiring author Amala Golej said.

AI gets its data from the public internet, Wikipedia, user interactions, YouTube, and digital libraries. In short, AI models are trained on human works.

Hundreds of thousands of literary works across all genres have been used by major technology companies to train their AI models. The problem lies in the fact that authors are usually not asked or even told that their work is going to be used by AI, nor do they get any form of compensation or credit.

As AI continues to copy instead of create, many are beginning to stand up against the rapid rise of the technology, just like the Lorax. These activists are driven by concerns over job displacement, loss of human creativity, and existential risks; just as the Lorax was driven by concerns over animal displacement, deforestation, and society as a whole.

The reign of the Thneed ended with a destroyed ecosystem and a society no longer aware of the bright and hopeful world of the past. Our society isn’t yet devastated by the effects of AI, but as it continues to progress and take over more and more of daily life, the light at the end of the tunnel continues to dim.

The environment cannot handle the overuse of water and emission of harmful gases that AI brings. Society cannot survive AI’s takeover of all aspects of life.

The Lorax spoke for the trees because the trees had no tongues. As AI begins to speak for all of us by writing our emails, creating our art, and changing our environment, we must ask: Who is speaking for AI’s ‘trees’? Who is protecting the creativity, the truth, the labor, and the environment that built this technology?

AI is not a character with a conscience, but a mirror of its maker. If we want a future that flourishes, we must make sure that it is our hands planting the forest, rather than harvesting for the machine.

“Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It’s not.” – The Lorax, Dr. Seuss

The author is a student at Elkhorn North High School in Omaha, Nebraska. We reprint this story published in the North Howler on Feb. 9, 2026, with their permission. 

AI: The Thneed of the 21st Century © 2026 by Youth Environmental Press Team is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/