He was portrayed as smart.
So I'm left with the notion that he just didn't actually give a damn.
Not much sympathy on my part for him and his desire to make a fast buck.
Well, he obviously didn't want his factory to shut down due to running out of resources... and he regretted the consequences once he saw them. He also had a much more pleasant and helpful personality than the Lorax.
And what's with your dreary moralizing and disdain for people who want to make money? The Lorax was obviously a relic, someone who couldn't accept progress and didn't like technology. He really looked like he was just being whiny and clinging to the past, loving nature. Nobody liked the Lorax, and people wanted the the product the Onceler was selling.
It could even be argued that the Onceler got more fulfillment out of life earlier on when he started out. The Lorax just spent his whole life fighting a hopeless battle and getting more discouraged over time. If he hadn't done what he did, he wouldn't have gotten that enjoyment. So in supporting the Lorax, you say that we should sacrifice comfort and enjoyment in order to preserve resources that are assigned an arbitrary value based on some sense of what's right and wrong, and not for any good reason.
Maybe he communicated it in the only way that he could and didn't "choose" a particular style. Would you think someone should gripe about how you presented your ideas, saying you should picked a "better" way... as if you specifically chose the way that didn't make sense? I doubt that.
YOu know how the prophetic types are anyway.
It takes a certain type of personality to survive being ignored and persisting in the face of impossible odds.
Why should I admire the Lorax just for persisting if he didn't succeed? It was futile and a waste of time, when he saw it wasn't working he should have tried something else. But he didn't, he just stuck to the same course. The Lorax might have been right about one thing, but he wasn't particularly bright or creative overall.
And yes, I do think that if someone is presenting their ideas poorly, they should have to learn how to present them differently before they deserve to have them listened to or accepted. Presentation is as important as substance in the end, in how people look at it, you know.