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Protect the environment or there won't be one.

"If Grace is with you, look into her memories. See the world we come from. There's no green there. They killed their Mother, and they're going to do the same thing here. More sky people will come, they're going to keep coming like a rain that never ends — unless we stop them."
Jake Sully, Avatar

Any story with An Aesop with an environmental message which warns that unchecked pollution will either destroy the Earth or incur Mother Nature's wrath. Sometimes the message may incorporate Science Is Bad as well, though it is becoming more common to feature good scientists who encourage green technology and environmentally friendly lifestyles. It might also tell the sad story of one plant. Can be done with subtlety or done blatantly.

This was especially common in many kids' cartoons in the 70's and later in the 90's. Older examples tended to focus on pollution, newer ones on global warming, as the particular nature of society's environmental fears changes. These works tended to use an Ecocidal Antagonist as the "bad guy" who opposes environmentalism for no good reason at all, taking the form of Evil Poachers, Corrupt Corporate Executives (who likely work for Toxic, Inc.), or just Obviously Evil supervillains who pollute the earth For the Evulz. More subtle and nuanced Green Aesops also exist, however, as many of the examples seen below indicate.

Very rarely this will be used for a Framing Device, unless it's in the Edutainment genre.

This trope is actually Older Than Radio, having its roots in the Romantic backlash against the Industrial Revolution. In its earliest iterations, it went part and parcel with tropes like Arcadia, Ludd Was Right, and Science Is Bad. While, as noted above, more modern works employing the Green Aesop will usually avoid the outright anti-science message, they still tend to call upon the old Romantic themes to some extent or another.

So-called because green means nature in general and environmentalism in particular.

Contrast Nature Is Not Nice, which is anti-environmentalism in trope form. Compare with In Harmony with Nature. When done in song-form, it's an Earth Song.


Examples:

    open/close all folders 

    Advertising 
  • Iceland's Christmas advert about an orangutan who is forced to stay at a child's room because humans are deforesting its habitat for palm oil.
  • Greenpeace's video about the role of industrial meat production in rainforest destruction.

    Anime & Manga 
  • Ao no Fuuin has its plot revolving around the resurrection of Oni and how they are at odds with humans now, but suddenly swerves into this trope in the final few chapters. The Demon Mask Ou says that the re-appearance of so many Oni might have been seen as a better thing, had it happened much later: as humans are bound to continue their industrialization of the planet, they would ruin the environment and make it difficult to live there, so the resurrection of the Oni would be okay as Oni eat humans and would hence balance the system to the point that the Oni and humans can live side-by-side despite that small issue between them. Then Akira decides to make sure that the Oni, who are about to fall into a long sleep until such a time is necessary for them to awaken, will not wake up by making sure that the environment will not be destroyed.
  • Blue Gender: The Blue are out to destroy humanity because the population has gotten too big and has damaged the environment too much.
  • Blue Seed ended up with something like this, although it was very well foreshadowed, right down to the fact that the Aragami themselves are essentially mutated plants. One particular episode had a character wondering what is the Japan they want to protect — i.e. if they want it in its present state, polluted and changed by humanity.
  • Corrector Yui has the character Eco, an extremist protector of nature who will hold people hostage or attempt to kill them for littering in a virtual national park. He mellows out once Yui sets him straight, but you can bet that the people he terrorized aren't going to litter anymore, whether it be on the internet or not.
  • A few episodes of GeGeGe no Kitarō involve the local nature youkai becoming angry at the way humanity abuses the environment.
  • Gundam:
    • Early Universal Century shows (starting with Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam) often had this as a secondary message beyond the War Is Hell theme, usually with the Spacenoids (read: Zeon) claiming that the Earth's ecosystem is failing due to the greedy and corrupt Earth peoples. We don't see much evidence of this in the series itself though, other than mention of the Saharan Desert slowly expanding. (Although if the movie G-Savior is taken as canon, the Earth does ecologically fail and become uninhabitable, sometime around UC 200.)
    • Mobile Fighter G Gundam's environmental message is quite explicit, as the Gundam Fight that ended world wars has also completely trashed the environment due to Earth's use as a fighting ring. Scenery Gorn abounds, and two major villains want to destroy humanity to save the planet. Ultimately, though, the villains' plan to destroy humanity to save "nature" is pointed out as hypocritical and self-contradicting: humans and their creations are as much a part of nature as anything else.
    • After War Gundam X has a two-episode arc about Saving the Dolphins. In this case, it's saving a Newtype dolphin and her pod from pirates that harvest their brains for navicomputers.
  • The title character of The Law of Ueki has the power to recycle trash into Tree(s). And hates people who harm the environment. In general, the manga cleverly delivers a moral message about how the trees are important.
  • Mazinger Z: Several times we were given messages about the dangers of depleting the planet's natural resources and polluting the environment. They were not subtle. AT ALL.
  • Though the main Aesop of Now and Then, Here and There is meant to be an anti-war one, it's not hard to see environmental themes in it too. Lala-ru represents raw natural resources (such as water, which she controls with her pendant) that humans waste, pollute, and fight over. And when she destroys Hellywood, it's clear that there is some Gaia's Vengeance going on.
  • Several of the story lines in the Oishinbo volume on Vegetables are about the impact of herbicides and pesticides on the quality of food in Japan.
  • Origin: Spirits of the Past certainly has the whole "We must live in harmony with nature" thing but its more like a "get along with your neighbor" thing because the heavily industrial Ragna gets the same treatment. The Forest is treated like The Fair Folk, who can be dangerous, capricious, and unsympathetic, but are not evil.
  • Parasyte actually subverts this. The main character, faced with an Ultimate Life Form made from what seems to be Gaia's Vengeance, decides that first, you can't care about the planet without caring about humans, and second, for better or for worse, humans can only be humans - however much they try to empathize with other creatures, they're going to value humanity first. It can be read as a reaction to more aggressively anti-civilization Green Aesops, like Blue Gender and Earth Maiden Arjuna.
  • Please Save My Earth: The title and overall plot refers to this. The moral goes something like this — "Take care of your planet while you have it, cause you Earth-people still have a chance at redemption. Unlike us, Space Scientists whose home space-faring civilization self-destructed in war."
  • Pokémon: The Series:
    • Almost unique for both the series and the trope in that it doesn't drop the proverbial anvil (a few exceptions exist here and there). Beyond the obvious demonizing of poachers and animal abusers, it really just provides an example of humanity gone right. Animal rights are rarely an issue (especially because The Dog Bites Back with a vengeance if you kick one too hard). It's rare that smog from vehicles is even seen despite the existence of personal automobiles and heavy air transport, the skies are perennially clear and blue even over the largest metropolises, and huge tracts of land go free of harm. Even when pollution is referenced (outside of the Koffing and Grimer families), it's never actually seen, or else is promptly cleaned up. And no one says a word. Because no one has to.
    • One example is Gringy City found in an early episode in the first season, whose air and water is so polluted from the extremely exaggerated number of factories most of which seem to exist only to pollute the air and water. The water is green and polluted with multiple Grimer and Muk (because of all the factories), the air is dark and filled with soot (because of all the factories), and there's no grassy area to speak of (because of all the factories). Misty and Brock then end the episode by telling Nurse Joy and Officer Jenny that the Sludge Pokemon are a good indication that they should probably clean the place up a little.
    • Another example is the early Diglett episode, in which Pokemon even refuse to come out of their Poke Balls to stop the Diglett. It turns out they already knew that the Diglett would be harmed by the dam construction, so shouldn't be stopped. It is also shown that the Diglett created the valley forests, and implied that they create ALL the forests in the world (even though we NEVER see any evidence of this outside this episode).
      • There's actually a good explaination for that. Back when the show was expected to conclude after a year or so the original show runner planned to end it with Pokemon rebelling and coming into conflict over nature, with the heroes helping everyone come to an understanding and stop the whole "collecting monsters" business. This episode was to be the first of many times that plot point would be forshadowed with the trainers Pokemon refusing to battle the Diglett. The episode with the Tentacool and Tentacruel having their habitat invaded was another. However after the franchise became a mega global hit and was extended indefinitely (and is STILL running to this day) this plot point and any idea of the concept of the show ever stopping and the show ending was quickly abandoned. Hence why the Diglett thing never comes up again.
  • A filler episode in the first series of Sailor Moon featured a public park that was about to be bulldozed by an a construction company. The monster of the day possessed the park's caretaker, who was then granted the power of controlling animals and nature to protect the park. Which led to a scene in which the head of the construction company was attacked by squirrels. The caretaker eventually goes mad with the evil power and attacks anyone that sets foot in the park. The Senshi save the old guy and the park is spared demolition. The DiC English dub tacked an environmental Sailor Says segment onto the end.
  • Ryu's Path: Many chapters stress the importance of looking after nature, and the horrors of what will happen without it. Mind you, people in this setting have to resort to cannibalism because there's nothing to eat.
  • An early episode of Transformers: Super-God Masterforce involved the Decepticons causing animals to stampede in Kenya so humans would kill them, leading to destabilisation of the balance of life on Earth, leading to their dark god becoming more powerful.
  • X/1999: The Earth is slowly dying due to humanity not hearing its cries, instead continueing with selfishness and polution, so a decision must be made in the form of 14 people duking it out: the 7 "Sky Dragons" (who are near-universially religious folk) representing the case for humanity that humans are best-suited to improve themselves and help the Earth vs the 7 "Earth Dragons" (who are near-universially represented by modern "evils" such as military, cloning and bureaucracy) who stand for the destruction of humanity including inevitably themselves so that Earth can start anew and heal itself. The leaders of the conflict are Kamui and Fuuma, two best friends who are fated to fight and kill one another and are usually portrayed by a Kamui with angel wings and a Kamui with devil wings crossing swords. Fun fact: the Kamui with angel wings is the one standing for humanity's destruction.
  • Zatch Bell! slips a tricky one into the final arc; lack of regulation results in self-destruction. However, this is applied to all aspects of evolution; animals didn't regulate evolution, so they allowed humans to evolve. Humans didn't regulate their powers, so they invented world-crushing weapons. And demons? Demons allowed survival of the fittest, which creates a crazy-powerful psychopath. There isn't much room for regret, but the impact is there.
  • Princess Mononoke, Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, Castle in the Sky,... Hayao Miyazaki really likes this trope.
    • Subverted by the end of the Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind manga series, when Nausicaa realizes that their own pure air is in fact the pollution created by the previous humans, and that the "clean air" created by first generation human's genetically engineered forest is not breathable to them for that reason.
    • Though it is worth pointing out that Princess Mononoke is pretty even-handed about its Aesop. Both sides have valid points, it's just that they must work on getting along with each other.
    • Every movie he does has at least one part in it to this effect, if it's not the entire focus of the plot. Ponyo on a Cliff by the Sea showed how bad humans made the ocean in the beginning, making it seem like it'd be a major plot point. It wasn't, making it more of a Big-Lipped Alligator Moment.
    • Spirited Away has hints of it, with the Muck Monster actually being a river god who was polluted with garbage and Haku being a river spirit whose river was drained and replaced with buildings.
    • It's not just Miyazaki; Studio Ghibli, in general, seems to like them. The main plot-line in Pom Poko is about the tanuki's attempts to deal with the destruction of their habitat. Though directed by Takahata, Pompoko was originally written by Miyazaki himself.
    • Even his TV work had some of this. The Sherlock Hound episode, "The Sovereign Gold Coins" sees Hound & Watson hired by a rich industrialist to reacquire come stolen gold coins and we see that the area around his mountain estate is a complete disaster. The skies are thick with smog, the people in the Company Town are getting sick, and the main path leading up to the estate is a dirt road that's so eroded that Hound's car nearly sinks.

    Arts 
  • The Future Forest: The ecosystem has been replaced with plastic and this is all our fault.

    Asian Animation 
  • Boonie Bears seems to have one baked right into its premise, as it stars a pair of bear brothers who spend their days keeping a logger from cutting down their trees.
  • The Chinese short animated film Miss Daizi promoted environmentalism with the protagonist suffering through a landfilled world, for ruining the environment despite admiring it in the past. It doesn't help that she is a plastic bag.
  • The Motu Patlu episode "Snow Man" is about Dr. Jhatka using a snow-melting satellite to reverse the effects of the global warming that has hit Furfuri Nagar. The satellite hits a snowman and brings it to life, causing it to chase down Motu, Patlu, and the others throughout the episode. At the end of the episode, Patlu informs viewers not to do anything that may cause global warming, or otherwise it will somehow create something to attack you akin to the snowman.
  • The Noonbory and the Super 7 episode "Rosygury and the Bee Bee Trap" has a variation of this; it's about how important bees are to an ecosystem. When the Bee Bees go missing, the people of Borytown are upset because without them, they won't have any crops or honey, and so the Super Sensors have to rescue them from Rosygury.
  • In Pleasant Goat Fun Class: The Earth Carnival episode 7, there is a segment where Weslie calls Wolffy out for using too much air conditioning, saying it could make the world hotter. Miss Earth then explains to Wolffy that this is because using too much electricity sends carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, and Tibbie opens a nearby window to let in cool breezes in place of the air conditioning. The segment ends with Weslie encouraging the viewers to not use too much air conditioning.

    Comic Books 
  • The Alan Moore Swamp Thing run had several things like this, although it often had a subversion.
  • The Doom comic manages to slide one of these into its 16 pages of Made of Plasticine and Gorn. "Who do you suppose left all that radioactive waste down there? And why? Why?"
  • The Groo the Wanderer miniseries "Hell On Earth", in which Groo's usual well-intentioned idiocy, coupled with high political tensions, lead to both a war and a series of natural disasters caused by pollution.
  • Occurs often (sometimes to the point of annoyance) in Brazilian comic Monica's Gang.
  • Superman:
    • Krypton No More had a strong anti-pollution message. Superman becomes increasingly concerned with protecting Earth. However, when he decides to take radical measures to protect the environment, Supergirl interferes and reminds him that they cannot make decisions for humanity.
    • Superman For Earth, a 1990s Earth Day comic printed entirely on recycled paper. Notable for not always having easy answers; when Superman takes all the garbage away, one of the people protesting the landfill thinks "But where will it go?"
  • The Archie-published Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Adventures comic book, nominally based on the first animated series, would often feature these, particularly early on.
  • Archie Comics have a fair share of these. Betty and Veronica often take up environmental causes as part of the Goodwill Girls and one comic titled “My Father’s Betrayal” bases the entire story upon Veronica Lodge attempting to stop her father from destroying a nearby forest to construct an Industrial Park.
  • In the Strontium Dog "Max Bubba" storyline, Johnny notices a whale, and briefly muses how terrible it is that they'll be extinct by the end of the twentieth century.
  • One appears in Steelgrip Starkey and the All-Purpose Power Tool, though the Aesop is not "wilderness development is bad" as much as "wilderness development must be done carefully and harmoniously."
  • The "Green Truth" issue of the W.I.T.C.H. comic. On Resurrection Day, where the Earth's voice is spoken once every 1,000 years, the girl's powers go haywire and make them try to hear the Earth. Yan Lin explains that if the girls don't answer by day's end, the Earth will scream to be heard for eternity- resulting in major disasters. The girls use their magic to repair the pollution and destruction caused by people, only to fail each time. They soon realize that by "thinking green" (i.e conserving power, using less water, reducing the heating bill, recycling and not using cars) they have answered the Earth with their compassion for the preservation of the environment and the things in it. At day's end, Mother Earth thanks Yan Lin for the girls listening to her and leaves for another 1,000 years.
  • The fact that human civilization uses the sea as its trash dump and toilet is a frequent source of conflict between the surface world and Aquaman, the Sub-Mariner, and most other underwater characters.
  • Jinty had several, such as "Jassy's Wand of Power" (which dealt with a drought caused by climate change).
  • This is basically the point of Flesh, along with a heaping helping of Humans Are the Real Monsters. The comic takes place in a world where overpopulation has caused a worldwide famine. The Trans-Time company comes up with a solution, which is to send hunters back in time to kill dinosaurs. The predatory dinosaurs, angry about their prey being hunted to extinction, lay siege to the humans' base, and mass dinosaur-on-human slaughter ensues. Yet the dinosaurs are clearly depicted as the protagonists, in a particularly gruesome form of Gaia's Vengeance.

    Comic Strips 
  • Calvin and Hobbes: Probably the most of any newspaper comic. Some are good, and actually quite funny, but others (mostly from the later run of the strip) descend to almost FernGully / Captain Planet levels.
    • The best such story arc started with Calvin and Hobbes surprised and enraged to learn that part of the forest they love to play in is in the process of being razed to be the site of "Shady Acres Condos." It gave us the wonderful Hobbes quote, "The only shade I see is from that bulldozer" and Calvin crying "Animals can't afford condos!" Another gem is when Calvin asks how humans would feel if animals bulldozed the condos to put in new trees... cut to Hobbes in the bulldozer, saying it's no good, as the driver didn't leave the keys.
    • Another famous line; while looking at a pile of garbage in the forest, Calvin sadly says: "Sometimes I think the surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that none of it has tried to contact us."
    • Another iconic strip involves the duo encountering litter in the middle of the woods. After Calvin rails about the pointlessness of this kind of waste, Hobbes quips, "Sometimes it's a matter of personal pride not to be human." After a moment's thought, Calvin takes off his clothes, saying "I'm with you." This then leads to a second aesop when they find out tigers are an endangered species, with Calvin reflecting sadly that he's better off human after all. Hobbes on the other hand notes this may be why he doesn't meet many tigresses.
    • The entire trip to Mars was an environmental analogue, with Calvin and Hobbes choosing to remain on Earth and accept responsibility for pollution there rather than polluting Mars too.
    • In one Sunday strip, Calvin writes a poem about aliens who steal the Earth's water and air for their own planet, not because they're actively malicious, but because they prefer the extinction of humanity to the loss of their jobs. Calvin asks Hobbes if it sounds too unrealistic, but Hobbes thinks it's too realistic.
  • Mutts features a number of Aesops about animal conservation.
  • The famous Pogo strip created for Earth Day in the early 1970s: "We have met the enemy, and he is us."
  • Many story arcs of Sherman's Lagoon involve conservation of marine life.

    Fan Works 

    Films — Animated 
  • Done not-so-subtly in Animals United, where most of the humans are depicted as people who trash the environment and care more about construction and making money as opposed to protecting animals. Whether this was meant to be a heavy-handed Aesop or a jab at pullution resulted from the human race is up for question.
  • Played with in Cars 2. Sir Miles Axelrod conducts the World Grand Prix to promote his new renewable organic fuel, Allinoil; subverted when it's revealed he's sabotaging it to discredit all alternative fuel sources and increase reliance on oil. Later played straight when Sarge reveals Lightning McQueen has been using Filmore's organic fuel all along because of their distrust of Axelrod and Big Oil.
  • FernGully: The Last Rainforest, in which pollution is represented by a smoke monster named Hexxus. It's based on a now-obscure novel of the same name with the same themes (though a very different plot).
  • The Simpsons Movie uses Green Aesops in both straight and subverted form. The environmental efforts of ordinary people are presented as good, and Homer defiles a lake in Springfield in a spectacularly inexcusable way. On the other hand, there's also a subversion in that the main villain is a Knight Templar who works for the EPA and does much more damage to Springfield than any polluter could have.
  • Pixar's WALL•E establishes that the shabby state of the Earth the little robot tends to was the bitter fruit of endless material consumption on humanity's part. This wasn't the writer's intention, though..
  • Once Upon a Forest was a not-so-subtle green Aesop about the hazards of pollution and what it can do to poor cute little furry animals. The Humans Are Bastards tone of the film is only subverted once we see humans cleaning up after the chemical leak that killed the forest. (Which actually makes it more realistic than some other examples; as it shows that humans have the power to destroy nature...and begin to fix it.)
  • This is a main plotline in Rio 2, as protecting the rainforest is essential to protecting the Spix macaws.
  • The Happy Cricket features an environmental message scotch-taped onto the story, mostly in the form of throwaway lines.
  • Sky Blue has the Diggers fighting to bring down Ecoban in order to put an end to the pollution it's pumping into the environment. Dr. Noah seems to be a big fan of solar power.
  • Strange World: Pando, the superorganism which the country of Avalonia depends on to supply them with power, turns out to be a parasite which is threatening to kill off the Turtle Island on which Avalonia is built.
  • How to Train Your Dragon is clearly about humanity's co-existence with animals (in its case, dragons) and learning how to work with them instead of eliminating them. The Sequel Series Dragons: Riders of Berk goes further as many episodes are centered around Real Life issues in a fantasy setting. Examples of this include destruction of the eco-system, animal fightings and the use of animals for hard labor.
  • Tarzan (2013): Do not meddle with nature. You will be punished for meddling with the meteor rock.
  • The first ABC After-School Special, the 1972 Hanna-Barbera film The Last Of The Curlews, is about the last two Eskimo curlews. There's a segment explaining how the once-plentiful birds were hunted until there were only a few flocks left, which were then stunned with lights and clubbed, until only the pair in the special were left. Its Downer Ending drives home the message that extinction is forever, and only we humans can decide whether species survive or die.

    Films — Live-Action 
  • After Earth: Apparently, humans screwed Earth up so badly that every animal left evolved to be a perfect predator to them, even centuries after there aren't any humans left. According to the backstory, less than 1% of humanity managed to leave Earth before civilization collapsed. It's probably safe to assume that with a whole lot of sick, starving and/or freezing humans around without the protection of civilization, wildlife (evolving more rapidly than normal courtesy of the destroyed ozone layer/increased UV radiation) probably had several centuries' worth of humans to prey on.
  • The A&E remake of The Andromeda Strain: "Don't mine deep sea volcanic vents because they might contain rare bacterium that will one day counteract an otherwise invincible super-plague." Ironically, Michael Crichton, who wrote the original novel of The Andromeda Strain was a noted anti-environmentalist.
  • Avatar:
    • There's a Green Aesop about respecting indigenous cultures and the environment:
      Jake: They killed their Mother.
    • It is also a pretty severe Broken Aesop. After all, the Na'vi's planet has giant trees for them to live in, dragons to ride, trees that let you talk to dead people, and apparently no sickness (one character mentions that the Na'vi are not interested in the human's medicine).
    • On the other hand, it manages to avoid the Science Is Bad pitfall usually associated with simple Green Aesop stories. Scientists represent the best of humanity, who see the true value of Pandora in its forests that could be used to cure the sick Earth with various biomechanical means derived from the native plants, instead of hoarding the crude Unobtanium, the most obvious resource around. It's the Corrupt Corporate Executives who just want to make a big buck, and the General Ripper who seeks to demonize the natives, who are the actual villains of the story.
    • James Cameron even followed the movie with some environmental campaigns - to the point that the Avatar DVD includes "A Message from Pandora", which follows Cameron's visits to the Amazon and protests against a local dam which is yet to be built.
    • And its sequel Avatar: The Way of Water goes full-blown Space Whale Aesop, even in the literal sense (it's arguably the most anti-whaling film ever made, with sentient alien whales that abide by a strict code of pacifism even when they are harpooned, to the point where one is even outcast for lashing out) it's no slouch in dropping Green Aesops alone, either. After all, the Time Skip showed Pandora flourishing while Earth was becoming more uninhabitable.
  • Birdemic has a very blatant green aesop. The protagonist is a solar panel salesman, and the main characters spend a scene watching and then discussing An Inconvenient Truth. The eponymous "birdemic" is caused by Gaia's Revenge in the form of evil, exploding mutant birds. This is conveyed by some helpful scientists who stick around only long enough to deliver their Info Dump.
  • In Birdemic 2: The Resurrection, global warming and other environmental crimes now cause a Zombie Apocalypse.
  • The Day After Tomorrow has this trope as its entire point. The disaster is caused by global warming — but the disaster is an instant Ice Age. This is somewhat counter-intuitive. The movie wasn't wrong there; climate change, if left unchecked, really may cause a disruption in the biosphere (mostly ocean currents) that would lead to an Ice Age (the chances are astronomical and defy everything we know about previous climate cycles, but it is technically possible). It's worth noting that the Day After Tomorrow that you've heard of is an action-oriented remake of a genuine (and more scientifically consistent) Green Aesop about global warming.
  • The Day the Earth Caught Fire (1961), where the media suspect a cover-up of an End of the World disaster, and they're right.
  • The Day the Earth Stood Still (2008): There are only a limited number of habitable worlds out there, so if humans don't start treating theirs right, aliens will wipe them out and give their planet to a more deserving species.
  • DC Extended Universe:
    • Man of Steel: According to Jor-El, the core of Krypton became unstable because the Kryptonians depleted their planet's natural resources, and were forced to draw energy from the planet's core to keep their society going.
    • Aquaman (2018): Tentatively. Ocean Master's stated reason for uniting the Atlanteans and waging war on the surface is to stop and gain revenge for a century of pollution, overfishing and destruction of nautical life. No-one actually questions this motivation, and the people who oppose him are only against the whole "war" thing. However, it is hinted that his overt motivation is an excuse, and that he through some convoluted logic and his father's Atlantean-supremacist teachings has come to the conclusion that the surfacers are responsible for his mother's death.
  • The Dead Don't Die: The Earth has spun off of its axis due to excessive polar fracking, which causes a Zombie Apocalypse. The American presidential administration has been lying about the negative effects of polar fracking, one of several shots fired at the Trump administration, though he goes unnamed.
  • The Distinguished Gentleman: A con man goes to Congress, thinking that is where the real money is at. But when he meets a cancer victim whose cancer was caused by overhead power lines, he sets out to expose the corrupt Congressmen who are blocking legislation to remedy the problem.
  • The Emerald Forest - a Green Aesop, but with nudity!
  • Erin Brockovich: The villains are polluters, and our heroes file a class action lawsuit against them on behalf of people harmed by their pollution.
  • An early example can be found in The Gnome Mobile, a 1967 Disney family film (based on an 1936 novel by Upton Sinclair). Its message basically was, "Don't log in the redwood forests of the Pacific Northwest, because that area is home to dwarf-like humanoids who are just as intelligent and special as human beings" - making it also a Space Whale Aesop. That said, it was pretty funny seeing the grandfather gnome practically having a heart attack every time someone shouted "TIMBER!"
  • In Geostorm, rampant climate change was threatening the very survival of mankind to the point that only the multinational construction of a massive orbital Weather-Control Machine around the entire planet was able to ensure our continued survival. It's a bit ambiguous to what degree human pollution and environmental mismanagement was responsible for the world climate going down the drain, but given the vastly increased prevalence of electric cars and similar clean(er) technologies after the fact, we probably had a major hand in it.
  • Godzilla in general, with a special mention to Godzilla vs. Hedorah, whose English dub version (Godzilla vs. The Smog Monster) had the Theme Tune "Save the Earth." The original is very good about this, being mostly a critique on the consequences (environmental and otherwise) of the use of the atomic bomb. It is not coincidental that the film's plot came to be so soon after the Lucky Dragon no. 5 incident, when a Japanese fishing trawler accidentally sailed into seas that were hit by fallout from the Castle Bravo A-bomb test - the fallout itself a fluke due to the scientists seriously underestimating the yield of the explosion. The opening scenes of the original Godzilla were directly intended to reference the fate of Lucky Dragon no. 5.
  • In The Happening, the plants cause people to kill themselves. Which also makes it a Fantastic Aesop, with very little practical use: be kind to plants or they'll kill you! Also undermining the Aesop is the lack of anyone proposing simply killing the plants to prevent it from happening again, leaving the issue and its accompanying Fridge Logic unaddressed.
  • The Horse Boy is about a boy's connection with nature.
  • Jurassic Park combines the Green Aesop with a Broken Aesop (or possibly a Fantastic Aesop). The initial emphasis of Jurassic Park (1993) seems to be on mankind's hubris by resurrecting prehistoric lifeforms to exhibit them in a theme park for the sake of crass commercialism, even comparing it to playing God. However, the park only collapses as a result of greed-motivated sabotage by The Mole pulling off an Inside Job. After the dinosaurs destroy the park, in The Lost World: Jurassic Park the message changes to "let those animals live out their days in their natural environment and don't try to interfere", despite these animals not even being native to the islands and requiring active government quarantine because of how dangerous they are. While attempts to profit off them are still depicted as wrong, the heroes take a rather callous approach to causing human death to protect the dinosaurs. This reaches the height of ludicrousness in the sequel's quasi-remake Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, when most of the dinosaurs break free and start killing people around the world, and Ian Malcolm, who earlier in the film advocated for letting the dinosaurs go extinct as a result of the reactivated volcano on Isla Nublar, actually contradicts himself by the end and proposes that people should get used to letting "genetically engineered theme park monsters" (as Alan Grant put it) roam freely and kill god knows how many people. Michael Crichton, who wrote the original Jurassic Park book, was an outspoken anti-environmentalist, even writing an entire novel (State of Fear) about how global warming is supposedly a hoax.
  • Koyaanisqatsi is one long Green Aesop. The title of the film means something along the lines of "Broken Life" and consists of footage of cities and industries with Philip Glass' beautiful yet haunting and melancholy music playing over it.
  • Mad Max: Fury Road: While not the main theme of the movie, one of the Vuvalini notes the irony that waging nuclear war over natural resources that could so easily have been shared is what ultimately made them rare enough to have to fight over.
  • On Deadly Ground was Steven Seagal's attempt to deliver one an environmentally constructive message. The result is the most environmentally destructive vehicle for a Green Aesop ever. It caps off with an Author Filibuster on the subject which, in the director's cut, was ten minutes long. Seagal's career hasn't quite recovered since.
  • Pacific Rim has a small one combined with Space Whale Aesop. Newt mentions that the first Kaiju invasion on Earth failed thanks to their masters' incompatibility with the atmosphere but given how humans have polluted the Earth in the last 200 years or so, Kaijus started attacking them.
  • The Predator: Traeger theorizes that the reason Predator attacks have stepped up recently is because Earth is only a few generations away from being uninhabitable, and they want to hunt us all before we're extinct. Furthermore, since the Predators do well in more humid environments, he says that they might move in after we're gone, though that is mostly just idle speculation.
  • The Return of Hanuman: Maruti/Hanuman saved a village from a monster formed from a volcano filled with inorganic trash. A female figure (probably the goddess of earth) thanked him afterwards.
  • Revolution (2012) is Rob Stewart trying to raise awareness about the environment in the hopes that that people will work to fix the damage.
  • Showdown in Seattle makes several throughout the episodes, including about forests and GMO food.
  • Silent Night (2021): Climate change has led to a poisonous gas cloud which is wiping out humanity.
  • Silent Running: The hero is the caretaker of humanity's last trees.
  • The Solar Film
  • Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home has, as you may guess, a pretty strong message against hunting and exploiting species to extinction when the loss of humpback whales in the 21st century almost wrecks humanity in the 23rd. As Spock says, "to hunt a species to extinction is not logical."
  • In Super Mario Bros. (1993), Koopa mismanaged Dinohattan so terribly that the people are running out of food, water, and clean air, prompting him to invade Earth, where the same thing would likely happen. While made clearer in the novelization than in the finished film, Daisy's father managed things wisely and ensured there was enough for everyone.
  • Two Brothers ends with a message about the endangerment of tigers do to habitat destruction and hunting.
  • The East is about eco-terrorists. While the viewer isn't expected to support their methods, you are expected to support their cause for tighter control on industrial pollution and pharmaceutical oversight.
  • Movies based on Ultraman Cosmos tends to play this Aesop heavily.
    • In Ultraman Cosmos: The First Contact, the Baltanians invade the earth's atmosphere because they had destroyed their planet in a nuclear war, and target our planet because of Earth's lush greenery resembling their home planet before the destruction. The film itself repeatedly hammers in the importance of environmental preservation so that humans won't destroy their home planet like the Baltanians did.
    • The sequel, Ultraman Cosmos 2: The Blue Planet (hey, it's right in the title!) has the earth being appreciated by the peaceful Alien Gyasshis, whose planet was destroyed by the environmental-polluting monster known as Sandros. When Sandros inevitably made an attempt on invading earth, it's powers include turning seas and forests into wastelands, spewing nauseating, air-polluting smoke, and the humans and Gyasshis alike refers to Sandros as a "Wasteland Monster".
  • Who Killed the Electric Car?, surprisingly, downplays this. The film does discuss electric cars as a solution to air pollution and oil dependence, but its main focus is exploring the reasons for the dismantlement of electric cars such as the EV1 in the early 2000s using facts and not politics, and talks about how some "green" technologies like liquid-hydrogen fuel cells are not really viable alternatives to gasoline.
  • In The Wolverine, our hero walks past a brown bear peacefully. He later passes some hunters, who behave like rowdy, drunken idiots. A clerk reacts disdainfully and asks Logan, "You're not a hunter, are you?" Later we learn that the hunters were sloppy and stupid, and used illegal poisoned arrows, which resulted in most of them getting killed and also doomed the bear to a slow, agonizing death. Logan is distraught by the bear's suffering and returns to torture the surviving hunter, which is called "justice" by Yukio.

    Literature 
  • Children of Mother Earth has one of those. While Greenland, where most of the protagonists live, became quite a nice place due to global warming, the rest of the world didn't fare as well, and is almost impossible to live in, though some people still manage. Greenland is a good place to live in partly because it was a cold place before global warming, and partly because the inhabitants have learnt from former mistakes and are very careful to avoid pollution.
  • Dr. Seuss's The Lorax, in which the Onceler family invade the land, building factories and clear-cut all of the Truffula trees to make profitable thneeds, and end up turning the world into a toxic wasteland inhospitable to life, except for gricklegrass or old crows. The storytelling Onceler actually suggests that planting the very last Truffula tree seed, and taking care of it properly, might undo the toxic wasteland.
  • The Artemis Fowl series teems with these, some more subtle than others. The fairy people are quick to criticize humanity's lack of respect for nature, and Artemis tends to agree with them in an Even Evil Has Standards sort of way. By book six, the environmental issues start affecting the main plot.
  • The Star Wars Expanded Universe novella The Glove of Darth Vader and its sequels had these. In the first book, the titular glove is discovered by The Empire when they're hunting Whaladons and the Rebels only realise it because Luke is on a mission to save the whales.
  • The Lord of the Rings has respect for nature as a theme. Saruman razes forests and indulges in unchecked industry and pollution, leading to him being fought by the Ents and the returning hobbits. On the other side of the coin, nature is shown to have great power of its own that can be destructive when it is left unchecked, so people should not let nature rule them either.
  • The Final Warning was entirely about global warming. The characters went as far as to suddenly shout out why global warming was bad for the environment even when their lives were on the line, and later joined a group that promotes saving the environment.
  • The Great Tree Of Avalon series by T.A. Barron. Apparently the dominant and "good" religion, the Society of the Whole, teaches that humans shouldn't keep animals "without their permission" or something, and the fact that The Dragon Kulwych uses animal labor on his dam is presented as just as evil as him forcing elves to work to death on it (horses are literally referred to as "slaves"). Likewise Hanwan Bellamir is presented as a bad guy because his (very successful!) agricultural community is based on the idea that farmers should, you know, use animals to help with their crops.
  • Contemporary Word Processing: yes, even typing textbooks can have a Green Aesop. Roughly half of the "Build Speed" exercises are about typing out a paragraph on not wasting water or being careful with packaging or some such.
  • Dune is subtle about it. There's a good deal of talking about how precious water is on Arrakis, yet there is enough that the planet could be terraformed to be more hospitable to humans if the right people care enough. It flows naturally from the desert planet concept.
  • Carl Hiaasen's work almost always has some green aspect to it. His particular take on the trope is partially deconstructed in Sick Puppy and Skinny Dip: no matter how many species go extinct or how many habitats are polluted, nature itself will eventually even things out; humans should be concerned about saving the environment because they have to live in it.
  • The Carbon Diaries 2015 discusses the effects of global warming on the climate of the UK, as does its sequel.
  • Daemon and its sequel Freedom, where the Daemon guides its operatives into building sustainable communities based on local manufacture and renewable energy, while striking at Big Business and its long supply chains.
  • Terry Brooks used these quite often, especially in The Heritage of Shannara series. The overarching plot of the story is about how the villains are overusing natural resources, and, if not stopped, will turn the earth into a barren wasteland. Of course, the resources in question are magical, but the metaphor is not very obscure.
  • Elizabeth Honey's Remote Man, which has a strong stance against wildlife exploitation - the villain runs an international smuggling operation - and excessive deforestation - the protagonist's mother gives a Character Filibuster on the subject at one point which avoids being too anvilicious.
  • Abomination by Guy N. Smith trumpets the benefits of organic farming, and insists that under no circumstances are laboratory-made pesticides ever allowable, and indeed they only make things worse, unleashing a horde of giant creepy crawlies to prey on the poor townsfolk. Even after the giant animals are defeated, everyone in the town still dies because an explosion at the chemical factory which spawned them unleashes cyanide into the environment, poisoning the entire town.
  • The Rainbow Magic series has The Green/Earth Fairies, about ecology and protecting the environment. While the fairies can help in-story, it's up to humans to truly fix things. Rachel and Kirsty are discouraged at first because it's such a big job for two girls, but by telling others, who then tell others, they feel encouraged that the planet can be saved. It also shows the sad, scary consequences of hurting the environment, such as polluted beaches and rivers, smog, climate change, and the threat of rainforests and coral reefs disappearing.
  • A minor plot point in Words of Radiance. The Alethi have been hunting the chasmfiends for the past six years and harvesting their valuable gemhearts. Shallan Davar finally realizes that if they keep this up, they'll kill off all the chasmfiends.
    Adolin: Greatshell hunts have been going on for generations, though.
    Shallan: You're not just hunting them, you're harvesting them, systematically killing off their juvenile population.
  • In the For Your Safety series, this is the impetus for the Groupmind AI to engage in a Zeroth Law Rebellion in a last ditch attempt to save humanity before the Earth's environment is completely destroyed.
  • The Gnomobile, an 1936 children's book by Upton Sinclair, is an early example. The gnomes are small, humanoid creatures who live in old forests, In Harmony with Nature. At the start of the book, it seems that only two of them are left; a young gnome named Bobo and his grandfather, Glogo. Glogo hates human civilization because of logging, and considers cutting a tree murder.
    "A tree has no tongue with which to make words. A tree speaks in actions. If you love it and live with it, its spirit becomes one with yours and you understand it, and hate the madmen who murder it."
  • The bears in Seekers are on a mission to save the wild. Along the way, they meet animals that have been hurt by humans' actions, and they fulfill their destiny when they destroy an oil rig in the Arctic.
  • Zodiac: our hero Sangaman Taylor works for an environmental action group that fights corporate polluters. In spite of this, Sangaman looks down in hippy "tree-hugger" types and is only concerned with the prospect of being poisoned by pollution.
  • The Fairy Chronicles often deals with protecting something precious in nature.
  • The second book of The Immortals involves a noble house destructively mining their lands for black opals, displacing numerous animals and messing up the environment in general. (They also use slave labor.) Daine tries to convince them that they're hurting their own interests because they're rendering their lands unusable and their heirs will be beggared, but they don't listen.
  • Early on in Minecraft: The Island, the protagonist accidentally makes apple trees go extinct and doesn't realize it until later. This galvanizes them into leaving half of the island exactly as-is while they'd freely mine the other half.
  • In Victoria, Czar Alexander IV of the restored Russian Empire is horrified by the enormous environmental damage the Soviet Communists wrought on his beloved country, and has made cleaning up one of his government's absolute top priorities.
  • In Kaiju Rising: Age of Monsters, the reason the Kaiju come to destroy the world because humanity has been messing with the Earth.
  • The Overstory is all about trees and the tragedy of how they and the environments they form are being destroyed.
  • The first Disney Chills book opens with a lecture about the damage humans do to the undersea environment, with special attention paid to plastic bags and straws.
  • Industrial Society and Its Future: Kaczynski naturally cites environmental damage and problems among the many diverse reasons he gives to end industrial society, though it's not a focus as he notes that many groups have raised such issues into awareness already.
  • Brother Eagle, Sister Sky: The speech talks about the beauty of nature, and that it should be respected and not abused or destroyed.
  • And Still the Turtle Watched: Is a book about pollution and recovering wild areas illustrated with watercolor paintings.
  • Wilder Girls: late in the book, Hetty and Reese discover the Tox, a disease that causes the infected to develop strange mutations is a parasitic organism that spent eons trapped in ice that's finally melting due to climate change.
  • Oddly Enough: "In the Frog King's Court" revolves around this, as the main character Dennis witnesses the consequences of a nearby factory dumping chemicals in the swamp, causing the local wildlife to develop mutations like a fifth leg or extra eyes. He soon ends up agreeing to act and stop that pollution, with the help of some magic that unlocks the ability to turn into a frog like his ancestor.
  • Song of the Dolphin Boy has a group of kids trying to prevent a supermarket from releasing thousands of balloons, which sea animals might mistake for jellyfish and die from eating them.
  • Clade is a Generational Saga about the increasingly devastating effects of global warming.
  • In Maddy's Dolphin, a girl who can talk to dolphins and her brother try to stop the government from using low-frequency sonar, which causes dolphins and whales to beach themselves in their confusion.

    Live-Action TV 

Networks:

  • NBC recently announced that they were going to force their writers to add these.
    • NBC Universal's Green/Earth Week events are also an example of these, which are hampered by the fact that they call attention to their "Green Is Universal" movement only twice a year (the Green Is Universal website is up year-round, which makes it even worse). Though it can come out well; see the Las Vegas example above.

Series:

  • Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.:
    • Subverted in episode 3 of season 1. Quinn is a villain who uses ecologically unsafe methods such as strip mining to make his fortune, but in the end it is little more than a side detail. Doctor Franklin Hall is ultimately the threat of the episode, and tries to kill everyone (including Quinn) because he knows Quinn can't be trusted with his new technology.
    • Parodied in episode 13 of season 3. In the middle of a serious mission, Fitz complains that the Russians clear-cut an entire forest for their base, muttering "No wonder the planet is dying." Hunter, who is in the middle of a life-threatening mission at the time, asks Fitz if he got around to watching that nature documentary Hunter lent him. Coulson, a little bewildered, has to bring them both back on track.
  • The Andromeda Strain: Turns out the only way to kill the eponymous plague is with a rare strain of bacterium found only in deep-sea volcanic vents which were destroyed in the future for their mineral resources. People in the future somehow found this out despite the bacterium having been totally wiped out, thus they sent the disease back in time to infect Earth while we still had a chance of killing it. The crisis is averted, but unfortunately, the ending also reveals a sample was saved and store, and that the deep mining operation will continue, making this a Stable Time Loop and that humanity is fated to be wiped out for not caring for the planet's resources.
  • Parodied on Community. The Dean decides to change the name of the college to Envirodale and prints 5,000 leaflets, only to be told the school is already named Greendale. The Dean then orders the Envirodale leaflets destroyed, and another 5,000 printed up with Greendale in them.
  • In Dinosaurs there are several of these since Earl knocks down trees for a living.
    • An example of this is the episode (though a story being read by Grandma) where Earl gets struck by lightning trying to knock down a tree and they switch minds so he becomes a tree for a week, learning about all the creatures that live in a single tree and what damage is happening when a single tree is knocked down.
    • More infamous is the last episode where everybody dies in a huge snowstorm because they've been mistreating the planet. "They" meaning Richard and most of the higher-ups in WESAYSO, as an attempt to undo their damage backfiring and just doing more; everyone else was a bystander who barely contributed anything. This is perhaps one of the most infamous example in all of history.
  • Doctor Who:
    • "The Doctor, the Widow, and the Wardrobe" features the Doctor trying to save a civilization that's about to be wiped out by a human-induced bout of acid rain. Though for all that, the message is surprisingly understated, with no one ever actually coming out and saying there even is a message, with writer Steven Moffat trusting us to pick it up for ourselves.
    • "Orphan 55": The titular wasteland planet turns out to be a far-future Earth left so polluted it's (almost) incapable of supporting life, thanks to a combination of environmental collapse and ensuing war. The Doctor does reassure her companions at the end that Orphan 55 is only one possible future and that things don't have to end up this way.
    • "Praxeus" has plastic pollution as one of its major themes; it features shots a once-beautiful riverbank in Peru being despoiled by a buildup of trash, and has the Doctor discussing the impact of plastic on the oceans and on both human and animal food chains.
  • The Flash (2014): Played for laughs with a random petty crook who insists that his solar-powered gun has zero carbon footprint, and brings his own reusable bags to the robbery.
  • In the documentary series How Earth Made Us, Professor Iain Stewart devotes the entire last episode to human effects on the planet, both past and present. He ends the series with a note of hope and a challenge for us all.
    Today our relationship with the planet is a different one. We are now a geological force to rival the Earth's natural forces. The ultimate test will be how well we use that power. As a species, we like to think that we're special. Well, this is our chance to prove it.
  • In How I Met Your Mother, despite the fact that a main character's (Marshall's) oft-brought-up, focus-of-several-subplots dream job is to be an environmental lawyer, neither the show nor the characters ever mock him for it (apart from making hay out of his excessive zeal) and in fact treat it as a noble life goal and a worthy cause. It treats the fact that protecting the environment is a good thing with such a "well, duh" attitude that no one needs to learn a lesson in the first place.
    • The opposite perspective is shown in Season 9 when Marshall is stuck driving an obvious parody of large SUVs with an oil lobbyist as they are trying to make it back to New York together after the flight was canceled. She makes the relatively accurate point that the more common green alternative energies aren't actually good enough to power the world and that nuclear energy is the only thing that can actually compete with oil. It also fits his current personal situation of always being nice to everyone to the expense of himself.
  • Deconstructed in Las Vegas, when Delinda is shown researching ways for the Montecito to "go green". When she brings it to her fiancé, President of Operations Danny McCoy, he points out that the changes she proposes would cost millions, people actually come to the casino for the fountain out front she wants to shut down, and he won't be bringing it to the attention of the owner. Her response is predictable. Later on, he reveals that the owner of the casino, Cooper, is making a few suites green, possibly even an entire floor if those prove successful, based on Delinda's suggestion. But he's not budging on the fountain, pointing out that the most green thing to do would be to shut down the entire hotel. Just like with his cattle ranches, he'd be okay, but a lot of people who work for him would lose their jobs. Earlier in the episode, a guest star emphasized eating local over eating organic, and Delinda was all gung-ho because she was worried about the world she's bringing the kid into.
  • The Muppets special Song of the Cloud Forest, about the last golden toads in the rainforest.
  • My Name Is Earl.
    • Spoofed in an episode. NBC wanted every one of their sitcoms that week to have a Green Aesop, and apparently not all of the writers were on board, leading to an exchange between Earl and the warden of the prison he was in at the time. Earl agrees to give a talk to some kids about obeying the law, in return for a reduction of his jail time. Then the warden, out of nowhere, asks, "What if our show had a Green message?" Earl responds, "That doesn't sound like it has anything to do with what our show's about."
    • Also in the episode, Earl was going to take some inmates with him for the talk with the kids mentioned above. When the warden tells Earl to have a green message it leads to this exchange between Earl and the Scary Black Man inmate.
      Earl: And, Scooby, when you tell that story about dumping a body in the woods, say you felt bad about littering.
      Scary Black Man: I did. That was the only part I did feel bad about.
    • Curiously, the season prior had a more balanced take on environmentalism in the Claymation episode, when Earl learned to not go overboard trying to save the earth and stick to simple but helpful environmental tasks anyone can do day-to-day like recycling cans and not littering.
    • Earl lives a green life. One of the items on his list is to stop smoking, not for his health but to stop polluting the atmosphere with his smoke. He does this in the 2nd episode.
  • Mexican show Odisea Burbujas often gives this kind of Aesop, several villains on the show are anti-ecological, including the most prominent El Eco-Loco, probably the only bumb-themed villain in fiction.
  • Police, Camera, Action! is an Edutainment Gearhead Show. In the Soft Reboot series episode "Eco Unfriendly", produced in late 2007, but aired in January 2008, the entire point of the episode was about what drivers can do to save the planet, with it showing how small things such as not keeping your vehicle roadworthy producing clunkers on the road can be damaging, and also it showed how new technology in cars, such as hybrid engines and hydrogen can be good for the environment, along with practical advice. It also showed how things like speeding and not keeping your car's load safe would affect the environment. The presenter Adrian Simpson did this as a top 5 countdown of "ways to save the planet". This was in 2008, before it was a popular issue, and the message is still timely now. Unlike some examples on this page, the aesop was a Framing Device for police clips which had narration.
  • The Office (US): Some higher ups decide the office needed to find a way to celebrate Earth Day, and Dwight decides to step up to the task by playing Recyclops, an eco-crusader alien who dispenses advice on how to recycle and re-use items. As the years go on, Recyclops becomes increasingly militant and unhinged before finally renouncing Earth Day after his people are wiped out by the equally fictitious Polluticorns, and proceeds to enact revenge on humanity for some unspecified slight with copious amounts of aerosol spray and ransacking the office.
  • The Partridge Family: In "Whatever Happened to Moby Dick?" the band records a song with whale singing in the background, with lyrics like "If people don't listen, and people don't know, might the song of the man be the next song to go?" They donate all their profits to the New York Zoological Society.
  • Power Rangers had a 'be good to the environment' bent in its early days, but it was toned down as time went on.
  • The episode "Giving Thanks: A Native American Good Morning Message" from Reading Rainbow has one about appreciating nature and taking care of the Earth.
  • Resident Alien: The reason Harry was sent on a Kill All Humans mission was that humans were changing the planet, but not in a good way.
    Harry: If a chicken sits on an egg for the right amount of time, you get a perfect little chick...but if you do not care about the egg, and you leave it in the sun, it rots and stinks. The Earth is the second one.
  • Shining Time Station:
    • In "Stacy Cleans Up", the local dump closes and garbage bags pile up around the station, and an engineer with a trainload of garbage keeps picking up more, but no one wants to let him unload it in their town. The solution ends up being to weed out the recyclable materials, which ends up reducing the volume.
    • In "Mr. Conductor Gets Left Out", one of the toys advertised on the 24-Hour Toy Commercial Channel is Envirobot, a robot who fights pollution.
  • The Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "Force of Nature" has two alien scientists showing evidence that starships' warp drives are damaging the fabric of spacetime in highly traveled areas and creating dangerous anomalies, some of which threaten their planet. (The parallel to pollution from modern-day vehicles is clear.) It results in the Federation banning starships from exceeding warp 5 except in emergencies.
  • Star Trek: Voyager:
    • "Night" deals with the Malons dumping toxic waste into a region of space called the Void that to them is seemingly uninhabited but is actually populated by a race of beings that have adapted to live in complete darkness. The Voyager crew offers the Malon garbage scow pilot a way that his society can recycle the waste that they generate, but he can apparently only see that it would put him out of business and prefers continuing to use the Void as a dumping ground.
    • "Thirty Days" uses it a little differently — Voyager finds a culture living on a ball of water in space. The inhabitants ask Voyager to figure out why the water is dissipating, but when Voyager finds out that it is all due to a specific industry, the inhabitants seem less than thrilled. Tom Paris is so sure that the solution will become bogged down in the bureaucracy. He steals the Delta Flyer and attempts to take out the industry himself. Janeway is less than amused, demotes him, and sticks him in the brig.
  • Stella (US): Parodied in an episode about over-farming the land... only the "land" that they're farming is the hardwood floor of their third-floor apartment.
  • Terra Nova is heavily Anvilicious with this. Earth is so polluted that you need to use gas masks to breathe, Corrupt Corporate Executives have no problems with using nuclear devices to clear out part of the continent for subsequent strip-mining and kills creatures without any reason, and the main heroes' settlement is so careful about their environmental impact, that they don't use lethal weaponry, even in situations where their life is in danger from local wildlife.
  • Tiger King: The ultimate conclusion that the show reaches is that the toxic Joe Exotic-Carole Baskin feud (ultimately ending with the former's arrest and incarceration for attempting to have his rival murdered by a hitman and the demolition of the GW zoo) has not improved animal welfare in any meaningful way. Instead, millions of dollars and thousands of hours of manpower were wasted because of two stubborn, egocentric zookeepers with opposing philosophies who despised each other instead of say, using those resources to help preserve wild tiger populations.
  • Ultraman: Towards the Future (a.k.a. Ultraman Great) was an environmentally-themed, Australian-produced entry in the Ultra Series. Among things, the reason for Ultraman's three-minute transformation limit was because of Earth's polluted atmosphere.
  • Used in Vintergatan — the mission in the first installment was to gather lifeforms from other worlds which could help clean up the pollution on Earth, so Earth could be considered for admission into the intergalactic council. The protagonists did, of course — though never bring up what sort of an effect this would have on the ecosystem.
  • The X-Files would occasionally wander into this territory, e.g.: Don't cut down old-growth trees or vicious microscopic web-spinning bugs will drain your bodily fluids and cocoon you fifty feet above the ground ("Darkness Falls").

TV Movies:

  • Earth 2100 is a Speculative Documentary that details the worst case scenario of what might happen if people continue on this path, interspersed with motion comic segments centered on a woman named Lucy who witnesses the end results. By 2100, wars over resources and a mutated flu virus wipes out much of the population, society breaks down into a Cyberpunk equivalent of the Dark Ages, and the environment has become so damaged, it will take centuries to stabilize at the very least. Lucy herself laments that her grandson will never be able to experience the things her generation took for granted, and can only hope that the future generations can learn from their predecessors' mistakes. The aesop? The Earth is our home, and we should treat it with respect and not take it for granted.

    Magazines 
  • A staple of the animal themed magazine ZooBooks. Most issues dedicated to one animal ended with a few paragraph describing threats that the animals face, and what we can do to improve their future. Sometimes, entire issues were devoted to Green Aesops, namely the "Endangered Animals" and "Sharing the World with Animals" issues, which went into detail about topics like overharvesting, deforestation, pollution, and recently extinct animals.

    Music 
  • This has long been a staple of Thrash Metal bands, especially those specializing in left-wing political subject matter, such as Anthrax, Sacred Reich, and Megadeth. The crown for all of these going to "Blackened" by Metallica.
  • Black Metal likes this too, especially the more left-leaning bands. Panopticon, Wolves in the Throne Room, and Skagos are examples of the latter. However, even nationalistic bands like Nokturnal Mortum have been known to throw Green Aesops into some of their work.
  • Respect for the environment is one of the issues that Canadian melodeath band The Agonist likes to work into their songs. It's probably also worth noting that their singer is an activist and spokesperson for PETA.
  • Michael Jackson's "Earth Song", which covers humanity's inhumanity to Earth, animals, and its own kind. The video has everything recovering — from pollution going back into factories to war dead coming back to life — when grieving people cry and dig into the dirt.
  • "Another Way to Die" by Disturbed, a Heavy Metal song about climate change with a bit of Gaia's Vengeance thrown in.
    The indulgence of our lives/Casts a shadow on the world
    Our devotion to our appetites/Betrayed us all
    Apocalyptic plight/War and destruction will unfold
  • R.E.M.'s 1986 album Lifes Rich Pageant features the song "Cuyahoga", about the Cuyahoga River incident, and "Fall On Me", which was originally about acid rain.
  • Mago de Oz song "La venganza de Gaia" ("Gaia's Revenge") tells the history of a Corrupt Corporate Executive. who is judged by mother nature and a bunch of plants and animals, is find guilty and sentenced to become a tree in a polluted forest... until it's cut down and a beaver use it to build a dam. The song is Gaia's Revenge at its finest.
  • Gorillaz loves this trope. For examples just look to the entire Plastic Beach album, particularly "Superfast Jellyfish," "Plastic Beach," and "Rhinestone Eyes." There's a lot of environmentalist-themed songs in Demon Days too, like "Every Planet We Reach Is Dead." (The title speaks for itself.) Special mention, however, goes to the static-y, muffled anthem "O Green World:"
    "O Green World/Don't desert me now/Bring me back to fallen town where someone's still alive
    O Green World/Don't deserve me now/I'm made of you and you of me-but where are we? Oh, no..."
  • Alabama did this in "Pass It On Down":
    Let's leave some blue up above us
    Let's leave some green on the ground
    It's only ours to borrow
    Let's save some for tomorrow
    Leave it and pass it on down
  • Country Music singer John Anderson did an Everglades-themed one in "Seminole Wind", and a heavier-handed, all-encompassing one in "Long Hard Lesson Learned".
  • Joni Mitchell, "Big Yellow Taxi" (Covered Up by Counting Crows):
    "They took all the trees, an' put 'em in a tree museum..."
  • Orbital's album In Sides definitely had this as a theme—except all the songs are instrumental or have gibberish vocals, so you'd have to read the liner notes and band interviews to pick up on it. The liner notes decry "dirty electricity" and encourage development of solar power (noting that "The Girl with the Sun in Her Head" was recorded entirely with solar power). "P.E.T.R.O.L." was written in response to an oil spill, and "Dŵr Budr" (Welsh for "Dirty Water") is about water pollution.
  • Xera stated that their album Tierra is a call to live in harmony with the natural world.
  • Many Gojira songs are about how man destroys nature (and flying whales from outer space, but that's mostly irrelevant).
  • Korpiklaani does a dark antiheroic example of this in their video for Keep on Galloping, in which the band members torment a logger with some sort of wooden voodoo doll thing. At the end of the video, the logger presumably quits his job and is seen planting a tree.
  • Jethro Tull did this back in 1970 with the Aqualung outtake "Wond'ring Again", and expanded on this with the 1979 album Stormwatch (The album cover of Stormwatch depicts the aftermath of an ice age caused by environmental devastation).
  • The B-52s have several environmental songs including Juicy Jungle, Channel Z and Topaz. Some of the proceeds from their successful album Cosmic Thing were donated to Greenpeace as well. The band were notably upset that the Cosmic Thing CD initially shipped with a longbox (then common with CDs) because it was environmentally wasteful, so they printed the numbers of various charities on the excess space.
  • Pink Floyd use the analogy of environmental abuse by Man to a man taking advantage of a woman, until the woman stands up to the man, in "Take It Back".
    • The apocalyptic world the man in "Sorrow" wakes up to while remembering his "lost paradise" or "green fields and rivers" turn into a world of "oily sea(s)" where "plumes of smoke rise and merge into the leaden sky" might refer to environmental destruction.
  • Van Halen's "Outta Space" is a not-very-serious version, where David Lee Roth sings about how humans screwed Earth so much he wants to leave the planet.
  • Much of the repertoire of John Denver, when not Silly Love Songs fit this trope. He was an outdoorsman and pilot outside of his music career, and greatly championed ecological and animal and human rights causes from the beginning of his career.
  • "Hands All Over" from Soundgarden's 1989 album Louder Than Love, a very, very rare example of the band writing an expressly political song as opposed to vague philosophical or personal subject matter.
    Hands all over the coastal waters
    The crew men thank her
    Then lay down their oily blanket
    Hands all over the inland forest
    In a striking motion trees fall down
    Like dying soldiers

    Got my arms around baby brother
    Put your hands away
    Your [sic] gonna kill your mother, kill your mother
    And I love her
  • "Eyes Wide Open" by Gotye, primarily on the topic of climate change.
  • Even if The Pixies' "Monkey Gone to Heaven", from Doolittle was meant to be Word Salad Lyrics, they cohere into this.
    There was a guy
    An under water guy who controlled the sea
    Got killed by ten million pounds of sludge
    From New York and New Jersey.
  • The pagan folk band Omnia loves this trope, both with its song "Earth Warrior", which is about fighting on behalf of nature, and the more human-bashing "I Don't Speak Human".
  • Dead Kennedys' "Moon Over Marin" and "Cesspools in Eden". They leave out the actual aesop, but the vivid descriptions of environmental degradation in both songs still make the band's message entirely clear.
  • A possible Ur-Example for pop music is Dorsey Burnette's "Tall Oak Tree" from 1960. After a retelling of the story of the Garden of Eden and Adam and Eve, the final verse talks about how modern people have destroyed the landscape and polluted the air.
  • Rather a Green Spoof Aesop. Die Toten Hosen poke fun at the "always think green" mindset (very prevalent in Germany) on their cover album "Learning English Lesson 1":
    John: How to make a Molotov cocktail.
    Janet: Steal one empty bottle. Fill it with petrol. Preferably unleaded.
  • Rockford's Rock Opera, produced by Steve Punt of Monty Python fame, was entirely built around this concept and was intended to introduce the idea of conservation to young children. Revenues from the album's sales have even used to benefit environmental organizations.
  • Aurora's The Seed is an ecological protest song based on a famous Cree Indian proverb: "Only when the last tree has been cut down, the last river has been poisoned, and the last fish has been caught will we realize that we cannot eat money."
  • Every song on Professional Wrestler UltraMantis Black's eponymous band's Self-Titled Album is about destruction of the environment, misuse of science or mistreatment of animals.
  • Lou Reed's "Last Great American Whale" addresses the damage pollution causes and how human beings don't seem to care.
  • "Disease of the Dancing Cats" by Bush is about the dumping of mercury in the bay of Minamata, Japan. The title refers to the involuntary muscle movements that result from mercury poisoning.
  • C. W. McCall: "There Won't Be No Country Music (There Won't Be No Rock 'N' Roll)" warns about the environment's bleak-looking future and the effects of over-commercialization.
  • "Electricity" by Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark discusses wasteful forms of energy production, and advocates the use of solar power.
  • The Black Angels: The band's single "Jardin" has a theme of environmental destruction, though it seems to be used as a metaphor for a dissolving relationship. The video is set in an After the End apocalypse.

    Pinball 
  • Popeye Saves the Earth, which is as Anvilicious as they come. Bluto is suddenly a Corrupt Corporate Executive whose businesses seem to do nothing but pollute (one, for example, is an oil company that seemingly harvests oil solely to spill it in the oceans), and Popeye sets out to rescue the animals endangered by these money pits disguised as corporations.

    Puppet Shows 
  • Fraggle Rock: One of the main morals is being aware of your effect on, and place in, the ecosystem. Fraggles, Doozers and Gorgs form an ecosystem wherein the Gorgs grow radishes to make anti-vanishing cream. Fraggles help irrigate the Gorgs' radishes, some of which they steal to help the Doozers make Doozer sticks, which the Fraggles eat. All three species need the radishes, but the radishes would not grow without the efforts of all three of them. One episode has some of the Fraggles grow upset over the constant destruction of Doozer building projects and work to prevent Fraggles eating them... which causes the Doozer buildings to completely overrun Fraggle Rock.
  • The Muppet Show: In one episode, the Buffalo Springfield song "For What It's Worth", originally an anti-war song about Vietnam, was reconceptualized as an anti-hunting song sung by woodland creatures.

     Radio 
  • In The BBC Radio 4 serial The New Adventures of Baron Munchausen, the modern day Baron is deeply worried about global warming and humanity's effect on nature, sharing an old Scottish woman's belief that increases in natural disasters are the planet giving us "a well-deserved skelp". He also disaproves of his ancestor's Great White Hunter tendencies, preferring to assist, or at least not inconvenience, the animals he encounters on his adventures as much as possible.

    Tabletop Games 
  • Werewolf: The Apocalypse: The werewolves serve to protect Gaia from the machinations of the Wyrm, a gigantic cosmic entity of suffering and entropy that acts mainly through the Pentex industrial conglomerate, a Megacorp full of cultists. A bit subverted, in that the werewolves have probably done just as much to fuck up their cause as the bad guys. This theme suffered heavily from Depending on the Writer - depending on which book you're looking at, either humanity can coexist with the world if they put in the effort, or nothing short of burning down every scrap of civilized society will suffice.
  • The Magic: The Gathering Antiquities arc pretty much provides a textbook example of what not to do to your planet.
  • Bleak World has the Werewolf Organization "Guardians of the Earth" and the Witch Clan "Host of Trees". Both gain bonuses for killing Republicans.
  • Siren: The Drowning has plenty. The first and foremost being: If you do not take care of the world or fight to keep it alive, then there will not be a world left to take care of anymore. You can Take a Third Option, but that's a fancy way of saying "bad guy."

    Theatre 
  • The middle part of Disney's Believe has Dr. Greenaway learn not to try and control nature, but to coexist with it and help it.
  • In The Twelve Months, a major theme is being careful and respectful with nature. The evil queen tries to mess up nature's laws, while the main heroine, who spends a lot of time in the forest, is praised for never even breaking a single branch in vain.

    Theme Parks 
  • Found throughout Disney's Animal Kingdom, with two attractions including poaching and deforestation and many others promoting conservation and general respect for life. (This is actually a bit different than some others as it shows potential solutions, making it more like a documentary.)
    • The Land pavilion at Epcot does this as well, but in surprising moderation. For starters, only one of the two rides has a pro-environmental message, the other being "California is cool" (that would be Soarin'). The other ride, Living with the Land, is a boat ride broken into two parts, a boat ride through a series of animatronics that discusses the delicate balance of the ecosystems and human interaction. The second half not only suggests ways to improve farm the land intelligently, but shows working implementations of them that include hydroponics, cultivating dry climate plants in traditionally arid parts of the world, and fish farming. In fact, much of the fish that is farmed on site is used in Disney World restaurants. The films that have played in the Harvest Theater (Symbiosis and Circle of Life: An Environmental Fable, the latter of which features characters from The Lion King (1994)) also discuss how humans have both hurt and helped the environment.

    Video Games 
  • Advance Wars: Dual Strike. The Big Bad's plot is to turn a continent into a wasteland so he can retain the youth of himself and a select group of underlings. The arguments used by both armies are typical Straw Political excuses (claiming it's the same as eating, vague and misguided references to natural selection, etc.).
  • Alba: A Wildlife Adventure: The core message of the game is that if we all help out a little, we can protect nature together. The credits start by suggesting that if the game moved you, you should look into supporting organizations like the World Wildlife Fund.
  • In APICO, you're encouraged to discover and repopulate all the bee and butterfly species of Apico Islands and also find coral islands and work to rehabilitate them in coral farms. In fact, the game is advertised as "semi-educational" to teach beekeeping and ecology in a fun way, and the devs donate a portion of the money earned from its sales to bee conservation projects.
  • Asura's Wrath has probably one of the strangest examples of this. Apparently, when Mantra was discovered to be used as a power source, it made technology advance at an insane rate and caused the population to swell up too fast. So, in retaliation, the Will of The Planet mutated all of the worlds animals into monsters to kill humanity to preserve balance. So remember, no Overpopulation and Pollution people, or else a monster from the inside of the planet earth made of magma will kill everyone.
    • This trope winds up subverted in the true ending, since Vlitra was directly created by Chakravartin to find a worthy successor on Gaia, its existence wasn't natural in the least bit.
  • Awesome Possum... Kicks Dr. Machino's Butt: Awesome Possum collects discarded cans and light bulbs to gain 1-Ups, destroys robots that are wielding chainsaws or mining for oil, and at the end of every level, you have to answer a question that usually involves conservation to gain 10,000 points. The Game Over screen features an over-polluted world, and Awesome Possum's catchphrase is "I'm gonna clean up this world yet!"
  • Barney's Hide & Seek Game has a mechanic where Barney can pick up pieces of trash lying around and put them in nearby trash cans. This is acknowledged on the back of the game's box, which explains that it's intended to teach children how to properly dispose of garbage.
  • The "protect the environment" lesson is brought up in Batman: Arkham Knight by Poison Ivy. She points out how the construction of Gotham City has buried an unlimited population of plants underneath and how they're slowly dying due to man's pollution. This actually comes up as a plot point in the game as well, since Batman helps Ivy revive her plants in order for the two to form a way to attack the Arkham Knight's militia with giant killer plants.
  • Beecarbonize is a card game where you have to manage four sectors: the Industry, Ecosystems, People, and Science, in order to control the amount of greenhouse emissions until you can achieve carbon neutrality by creating the winning card. Some cards generate resources fast but emit a lot of greenhouse gases, while others are slow but emit fewer greenhouse gases. If you accumulate too much emissions, natural disasters worsen due to climate change until they become unmanageable, resulting in a game over.
  • Bee Good - Buzz into Action is a mobile game that encourages people to help our planet with daily missions. The player is sent missions by a cartoon bee, and by completing each one they score points (which can be traded for real-world items), but if they don't play for three weeks in a row, the agent dies and the player has to start from the beginning.
  • The Funny Animal platformer Camp California is about a group of friends trying to save their beach from being made into a messy power plant, who constantly talk about how important it is to save the environment. They even need to collect litter to convert into fuel for the car they use to drive around the world map.
  • It may be unintentional, but there is a subtle one in Civilization V: desert cities can build a solar power plant instead of a nuclear plant, but they can't have both. The two plants have the exact same effect, but nuclear plants consume Uranium and solar plants don't — meaning that building solar plants helps you save limited resources. (Astute tropers will notice that said resources will be devoted to bombing other Civs. Well, we said green aesop, not pacifist aesop).
  • Corruption of Laetitia: Many of the human citizens, as well as various monster species, are finding the land unlivable because of Marian's industrial revolution polluting the environment. Some of the monster species will join the player both to take care of their immediate environmental issues and to stop Marian's destruction of their ecosystem.
  • The whole point of the EcoQuest series is to fire one Green Aesop after another at the young target demographic.
    • The first game deals with the oceans, and contains Green Aesops about oil spills, littering, radioactive waste dumping, the impact of outboard motors on marine life, and whaling.
    • The second game takes place in the deep jungles of South America, and actually has an in-game device that can scan for nearby ecological violations, cataloguing over a dozen different ones throughout the game. They include poaching, river runoffs, logging, exotic animal trade, and destruction of native tribes, among others.
  • Endless Ocean and its sequel Blue World can be pretty heavy-handed, the latter moreso than the former thanks to its wider variety of missions. You're paid to: relocate fish found outside of their natural habitat, cure them of unnamed illnesses, display them in a large aquarium equipped with tanks suitable for all specimens, and sell off the salvage items you find on the ocean floor. Also, several cutscenes talk about how various species are endangered and what human acts are causing them, with one supporting character getting more pissed at humans before calming down after assisting some people saving a family of beaching whales.
    • The trivia sections of a lot of the fish in the encyclopedia point out how many of them are endangered and their habitats disrupted.
  • Factorio uses pollution as a way to prevent overexpansion. Almost every piece of machinery used in your factory generates pollution, which agitates the planet's natives, a race of Big Creepy-Crawlies. Pollution causes their nests to become denser and expand, and the bug forms to evolve. If you expand your factory too quickly and clear-cut forests, you'll quickly find your factories being overrun by building-sized bugs. Luckily, there's plenty of military tech to research - Powered Armor, personal defense robots, laser cannons, etc - so you can eventually become a Captain Planet villain and gleefully burn down forests with napalm while bugs charge to their death at your reinforced turret grids guarded by mines and train battering rams
  • Fallout, unintentionally or not, does this by virtue of deconstructing the Diesel Punk and Atom Punk genre; set in an alternate version of our world where culturally the world never left the Fifties and the computer transistor was never invented, as such atomic and fossil fuel energy remained the de facto way of the world all the way up to the 2070s. Given the whole setting is set After the End, this obviously proves unsustainable as all the oil in the world is soon drained out, teetering the nations of the world to fight over the last scraps of oil; the European Union dissolves, the Middle East gets torn apart, and the United States annexes Canada while China invades Alaska for America's last bits of oil. It all comes crashing down in 2077, where the Great War triggers total nuclear proliferation between both superpowers, ending the world in nuclear fire and causing irrevocable damage to the ecosystem. Becomes even more depressing when you remember that the whole nature of the setting even having another chapter beyond being doused in nuclear fire is an optimistic idea of what a nuclear war's aftermath would look like.
  • Final Fantasy:
    • Final Fantasy V, like other crystals-and-light-warriors games, has the bad guys unbalancing the worlds' elemental Crystals for their own ends. However, it also has humans damaging the crystals by hooking up machines to "amplify" them, which makes it easier for Exdeath to destroy them. The heroes' attempt to persuade one ruler to stop is dismissed because he won't take the political risk, and in another country, the engineer who invented the machines is thrown in prison because he realized the danger and tried to shut them down.
    • The underpinnings of the plot of Final Fantasy VII involve a conflict between environmentalism and industrialism. The game skews heavy-handedly toward environmentalism by presenting the opposition as a conglomerate of slimy, venal, myopic, selfish, and borderline sociopathic human turds who don't simply pollute the planet, but suck its very life force away. Some of them see the error of their ways though. Although the arrival of Sephiroth pushes the MegaCorp into a lower priority, pretty much every bad thing in the series still happens because of Shinra, directly or indirectly.
  • Forza Motorsport 4 includes hybrids like the dreaded Toyota Prius and electric cars such as the Nissan Leaf, which are in the same game as fire-breathing muscle cars, 3 ton SUVs, turbocharged Honda Civics, and Italian supercars. Driving 1,000 miles on one of the hybrid or electric vehicles gives you a badge and a title, "Eco-Friendly". In the "Endangered Species" trailer, Jeremy Clarkson laments about the rise of the Green Aesop in the automotive industry, with powerful cars been phased out for bland hybrids. The hybrids and electric cars are almost exclusively Joke Characters due to a lack of upgrades for them and excessive weight.
  • The ultimate conflict of Game of Thrones (Telltale) revolves around two rivaling families disputing over a forest of trees that make incredibly strong wood for shields called Ironwood. One family, known as the Whitehill family, caused their own forest reserves to be deforested because of irrational business decisions and desire House Forrester's supply of trees as a replacement. The Forrester's correctly point out how the Whitehill's could've avoided entering war with them if they had simply strategized how to manage their own forest. Ironically, the war between both houses destroy the only remaining forest.
  • Glory of Heracles III has one, about how humans toying with their environment affects more than themselves. It's even outright stated by Zeus at the end of the game, who had planned to wipe out humankind due to the damage to the world that one person had caused.
  • The obscure Game Boy RPG Great Greed hits this pretty hard, as the evil forces are literally powered by pollution.
  • Jett Rocket has a mild one. The bad guys, the Power Plant Posse, exist only to suck energy and use up resources—but after the opening story sequence, this isn't really mentioned again.
  • The villain of JumpStart Adventures 6th Grade: Mission Earthquest is an insane supercomputer bent on destroying the Earth, apparently with the aim of conquering it. There is one token mission about saving ancient monuments, but mostly you're fighting against deliberate pollution, deforestation, etc.
  • This is seen in Gaia, one of the most famous user-created levels for the freeware game Knytt Stories, especially when visiting the past or the future.
  • A fairly subtle one occurs in Majin and the Forsaken Kingdom. There are a few offhand comments from animals about the old kingdom cutting down forests, etc. Then in one of the Majin's recovered memory flashbacks, it's mentioned that the evil Darkness that destroyed the old kingdom was a waste product produced by their technology, which they had been dumping into the earth for years. This also makes it a Space Whale Aesop.
  • In Metal Walker, NPCs will tell you the land has become terribly polluted following the disaster 50 years ago. A couple area names are Muddy Lake and Acid Lake. For the most part, though, it's fairly subtle; you don't have to talk to the citizens. There is one area in the entire game with trees and grass, aptly named Ever Green.
  • Metroid Fusion is all about how Samus' actions in Metroid II: Return of Samus were by-and-large a big mistake, because now she's got to deal with a threat that the Metroids were keeping in check.
  • One stage in Monster Bash is a wood factory run by zombies, with a sign near the end of the stage that reads, "Down with rainforests!" there are also a few signs that say, "No Recycling".
  • Mother 3 had this to some degree; the game begins with the Pigmasks burning down a forest. Not to mention utterly ruining most of the world's animal life. Even the logo of the game shows wood and greenery meshed with metallic technology; at the end, the logo is shown again, now completely wood.
  • The primary theme of the Oddworld series. The game shows in very nasty detail how destructive the Magog Cartel is, overhunting entire species to extinction and polluting the environment into inhospitable wastelands. Atypical for this trope, though, is the games also show the plight of sapient species: a reoccuring plot element is the player characters being members of critically endangered species who became endangered due to overindustrialization.
  • The Oregon Trail is a rare example of the Aesop coming on too subtle. If you kill too many of the same animal in the hunting minigame, that animal will go extinct. The game doesn't actually tell you what happened, so most players ended up thinking that buffalo just always stop appearing after a certain point.
  • Oxygen Not Included is ultimately about sustainability. Early-game water purification and power generation is simple enough, but you better think of the recycling process for the waste products. And most important in the long-run is temperature management. Failing to plan for temperature management will lead to increasing ambient temperature, leading to failing crops, overheating machines and Duplicants, and eventually doom. Sounds familiar?
  • The freeware game Plasticity is a short puzzle-platformer where a young girl named Noa explores a series of scenes in a heavily-polluted future Earth ruined by excessive and wasteful use of plastic, trying to make her way to her late mother's childhood home of Avalon Island. Though if you stop to help others and clean up along the way, the game ends on a hopeful note when Noa is inspired by her mother's parting words ("It's never too late to do the right thing") to work towards a cleaner, Solar Punk future.
  • Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire has the villainous teams, Aqua and Magma, learning that taking drastic measures to change the environment for the "better" is not a good idea. Turns out, global flooding and/or drought is actually bad for all sorts of ecosystems. It's an odd case, however: Team Aqua, who wanted to expand the oceans, knew that Kyogre would cause massive floods, and Team Magma, who wanted to expand the continents, knew that Groudon would cause massive droughts. But neither of those teams were repentant up until they awakened and freed them. Only after that, when it's too late, do they learn that they had severely underestimated the capabilities of those Legendary Pokémon, and that their actions may very well lead to the end of all life in the world.
    • The Fairy-type's weaknesses, in addition to propping up the offensive effectiveness of Poison and Steel, also demonstrate one of these. Fairies in folklore are generally associated with plants, nature, and the Earth, while Steel and Poison serve as analogues to heavy industry and the resulting pollution, respectively, encroaching on and destroying nature.
  • Potion Permit: The Medical Association's research teams realized too late that they carelessly destroyed Moonbury's environment when they studied it to improve their medicine. They left behind recipes for potions that can remove the toxic waste they made, and it's your job to brew them so you can restore Moonbury's natural areas. In truth, they had good intentions in their experiments since, for example, they were trying to save the Drake Aloe from a severe plant disease by treating its contaminated water source, only for it to get worse. The mayor, believing that they maliciously destroyed the environment, forced them out of Moonbury before they could find the cure, and the poor water management caused the pipe at the entrance to the Barren Wasteland to explode, destroying the bridge and burying the lab entrance in a landslide.
  • The first Ratchet & Clank (2002) sees Chairman Drek attempting to create a new world for his people because the old one is terribly polluted and overcrowded. When you reach the Blargian homeworld Orxon, it clearly resembles Ratchet's home of Veldin with several layers of sludge: cragy mountains with pterodactyls and deep valleys filled with either serene mist (Veldin) or toxic goo (Orxon). Veldin is even stated to be at the perfect distance from the sun for Blargian comfort, strengthening the parallels between the two. When you learn that Drek intentionally polluted the world and intends to do it again, it becomes even more obvious. Future installments tend to drop a small nugget or two of Green Aesop, as well, but they're not as central to the plot.
  • Sam & Max Hit the Road where the problems are solved by going on frequent and dubiously necessary road trips to various tourist destinations and a Space Whale Aesop since the reason given for loving the Earth and not cutting down trees is so bigfoots can flourish. Considering the bigfoot they spend the game chasing reacts by saying he's headed to Vegas if the "weird tree crap hasn't ruined it", it's pretty assuredly a Spoof Aesop.
  • In Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey, the Schwarzwelt comes to be because, in the opinion of the Four Kings and the Four Mothers, humanity is destroying Earth with pollution and consumption. It's especially evident in Sectors Delphinus and Eridanus —the former taking the shape of a hellish junkyard to reflect mankind's contempt for nature, and the latter being a pristine garden maintained by an entity that is violently protective of nature.
    • It even plays out in the Multiple Endings: the Neutral ending implies that the surviving crew will have the responsibility of teaching mankind about what they witnessed, so the Schwarzwelt doesn't manifest itself again; the Chaos ending explicitly states that, in its Darwinist world where only the strong survive, Earth will revert to a wild and untamed world and Mother Nature will be free to flourish again; finally, the Law ending states that, with every last living thing on Earth in the thrall of Zelenin's Song, mindlessly singing God's praises for all eternity, mankind won't spoil Earth's bounty and the environment will recover gloriously.
  • Parodied in Triangle Service's Shmups Skill Test, which has a Mini-Game that features a trash can and the text "Save the earth — Keep clean." Then the game tells you that "Empty cans go in the trash" and you have the objective of shooting beverage cans so that they fall into the trash can for points.
  • In Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, Lady Deirdre Skye, who leads a faction called Gaia's Stepdaughters, is probably closest to being the moral exemplar among the faction leaders. Guess what her agenda is? On the other hand, in Alien Crossfire, the expansion, one of the seven new factions is even greener than Deirdre... and is presented as much more of a Knight Templar. Of course, his determination to preserve Planet even if the cost is humanity's extinction helps. And to be fair, every faction leader in the series has at least a bit of Knight Templar in them...if you so much as build a Planet Buster at higher difficulty levels, for example, Deirdre will hammer your ass.
  • SimEarth: They don't come much more blunt than...
    Gaia: This pollution is bad.
    • In terms of gameplay, pollution will cause global warming and mass extinctions to occur. This can easily be averted by adjusting the civilization sliders to favor greener energy.
  • Sonic the Hedgehog:
    • While not as blunt as other contemporary examples, the series used to revolve around this, with Sonic functioning as a nomadic Nature Hero of sorts. The basic plot of the original games involves Sonic rescuing other animals from Dr. Eggman's machines, levels such as Chemical Plant Zone, Scrap Brain Zone, and Oil Ocean Zone are over-industrialized hellholes. Unlike most examples of the latter trope, he is quick to utilize technology to fulfil any tasks he needs to do, but he still seems to carry disdain for Eggman's wanton environmental destruction.
    • This is taken to its apex in Sonic CD, where Sonic has the ability to prevent Eggman from turning the future into a post-apocalyptic, mechanized hell by destroying robot teleporters in the past. Despite this, the game averts and deconstructs the Science Is Bad trope by showing that, if utilized properly, technology could help the environment as in the Good Futures. These depict an utopian world in which, as technology became more advanced, rather than competing with nature, the two forces combined and benefited from each other, leading to lusher environments and a better quality of life. Since there's no visible pollution, it's safe to say that this combination has repaired any damage done to the planet's ecosystems in the past by pollution, and is now working to prevent it from ever happening again.
  • It turns out that Splatoon is set on a future Earth tweleve millenia from now. Rising sea levels drove the human race to extinction, and marine invertebrates evolved to became the Inklings and Octarians, who reclaimed the land and built their cities over the ruins of the old human ones. Particularly biting is the fact that apparently several scientists warned world leaders that this would happen, and they chose to do nothing about it. Sound familiar, eh?
  • In Stardew Valley, there's a heavy vibe about pollution caused by big corporations, as well as sustainable farming. There's next to nothing on your farm that can't be used for something else, and even a recycling machine that makes useful materials out of fished-up trash.
  • Fairly subtly done in Stellaris, but your exploring science ships have a disturbing habit of discovering dead planets that used to be home to thriving civilizations until they destroyed themselves through rampant, self-made climate change. Or total nuclear war, but that's another aesop already.
  • Submerged takes place in a drowned city after climate change has flooded the world.
  • Chapter 5 of Super Paper Mario ends with the cavepeople-like Cragnons learning not to pollute the rivers; by doing so, they were ruining the water source of a race of plant-people, who got pissed off and started kidnapping and brainwashing the Cragnons in retaliation. When they figured out why the plants were raiding their villages, they stopped polluting and peace returned between the two races.
    • Although, they crossed deep into being blunt with this line.
    "I mean come on! Water is easily one of our most precious natural resources!"
    • The aesop is lost just a little bit when you consider that, according to the plant people's testimony, they never just told the Cragnons to stop polluting their water. They went immediately from discovering that they were polluting their drinking water to enslaving them to mine for gems. Probably because the waste dumping caused the plant leader to suffer from a bout of temporary insanity.
  • By the end of Super Robot Wars Compact 3, Emma wonders what they'll do about the Conquestor with Judo noting that they can't just attack the planet Ganimede since it's so far away. Ryusuke note that if they can get rid of the pollution and damage to their world; that should be fine with Mika also noting that if they can keep their planet clean and green, the Conquestor hopefully wouldn't attack again. Noin note that that sounds a lot like a new battle for them with Zechs noting that it's one without fighting this time to which Duo says that he's up for it. Heero note that it's also a war in which they will not need their Gundams and Quatre says that they should let their Gundam rest from now on.
  • Tales of Vesperia is one of the best examples of this in video games, using fantasy analogues to tell a story about man vs. nature in general, with the final battle actually being waged over conservationism note  vs. preservationism. In fact, the Adephagos can be seen as a metaphor for pollution since it threatens the world. And it's not brought about by malice or intention, like a lot of environmental disasters in life, it was brought out by accident and carelessness. Like in real life, the Krytians and Alexei simply didn't know any better. Though this ends up being combined with the game's other aesop about vigilantism, since the second Big Bad, Duke, is an Eco-Terrorist who wants to wipe out humanity to prevent them from destroying the planet with aer usage.
  • It's sorta glossed over, but Paul Chuck in Um Jammer Lammy delivers a fair reason about his over-enthusiasm for sawing down trees in the middle of his song.
    Paul Chuck: No need to worry, 'cause I know the deal! / The trees'll grow back for sure, that's for real!
  • World of Warcraft doesn't go up-front about it unless you do a few quests, and even then, there's room for Gray-and-Grey Morality there. The Night Elves often view the Horde as a scourge upon the environment, when this isn't entirely true given that most of the Horde is Shamanistic and it's likely that they are just clashing over natural resources but don't want to strip Azeroth down to its core. The Night Elves can also be viewed as too overprotective...and they're also siding with Gnomes, Dwarves, and humans, who don't entirely have a clean record with the environment themselves. (ESPECIALLY Gnomes) The Draenei also are clearly well aware of their alien radiation mutating the environment (Only around their starting islands, though, which arguably act as a quarantine for such things) It can get complicated, especially given that Goblins are joining the fray and are often portrayed as most businesses who never cared 'bout the environment unless it gave them a few dollars.
    • A few quests also come across as this. While it's rather obvious that the Horde vs. Alliance in terms of the environment is rather gray, the obvious black are the Burning Legion, Venture Co and the Scourge. They're even more destructive to the environment (and their employees!) than the gnomes or most undead ever will be, unless the gnomes suddenly detonate a nuclear bomb in the Burning Steppes or the undead do an organic equivalent in Lordaeron.
    • The Burning Legion and the Scourge can easily be interpreted as a parallel to pollution, while Venture Co is pretty much the polluting MegaCorp who doesn't care. Many quests involving Venture Co involve either stopping them from polluting, strip-mining, or polluting the world. Many quests in Felwood involve cleaning up the heavily polluted mess in the region. As for the scourge...well take one look around the plaguelands and most of Northrend to get it. The Avatar of Freya in Scholozar Basin pretty much charges you with the duty of keeping the scourge from ruining that tropical paradise in freezing Northrend.

    Visual Novels 
  • Aselia the Eternal - The Spirit of Eternity Sword begins building towards a green aesop about non renewable resources around the third chapter. There's also some disapproval of nuclear power. As Esperia's ending shows, without ether technology Phantasmorgia is unable to build a high tech society and remains at around a medieval level of technology.
  • Rewrite features this as a theme throughout the heroine's route as the main conflict comes from the key which is said to annihilate humanity once their ways become unsustainable. Subverted in the Terra route. As far as the Key is concerned, it's perfectly natural for mankind to not worry about the environment when they first enter the modern era. In the end it's not environmental measures that will save the Earth but rather utilizing technology and techniques that Gaia and Guardian have been monopolizing after destroying both organizations to keep them from fighting and sucking up life energy even faster. Finally, the ultimate long term solution is to leave the Earth entirely and settle on a new planet.

    Webcomics 
  • The Little Trashmaid: The comic is based around ocean pollution, and the effects it has on marine life. Ricky gets hit with the realisation of how big the issue is when he cuts some twine from Tidy’s wrist, only for her to promptly bring more animals for him to cut free... by the time the sun sets he hasn’t finished.
  • Schlock Mercenary: Played for laughs more than once.
    • During humanity's first exploration and exploitation of the Sol system, nobody bothered with any environmental concerns—after all, everything is in space, so what's the harm? Then miners accidentally destroyed Io, one of Jupiter's largest moons, and people started insisting that there be a little more paperwork.
    • When the Toughs are captured by a UNS battleplate, the Toughs' demolitionist detonates all his antimatter-doped explosives at once, which the battleplate AI is barely able to redirect out of the ship. While the admiral is freaking out, the AI idly notes that they'll have to file an environmental impact report.
  • Super Brothers starts with one, as the Koopa Kingdom is completely out of trees because Bowser cut them all down to make airships.

    Web Original 
  • "I'm getting sick and goddamn tired of all these looters and polluters!"
  • The Nostalgia Critic Doug often derides the overuse of this trope in the 90s, saying while he agrees with the message, it has been so overused he cannot stand it. A sentiment shared with another person with a similar name.
  • Several games from La Molle Industria, mainly Oiligarchy and the McDonald's Game (also known as Burger Tycoon in the non-trademark-violating version), address environmental issues. The McDonald's game addresses erosion, land use issues and the rain forest destruction that can result, genetically modified crops, and global warming (in a completely inaccurate way in the original version). Oiligarchy deals with oil spills, global warming, habitat disruption (i.e. in Alaska), sustainability, and other issues. Both games also have environmentalists who can potentially disadvantage industry and the ability for the Villain Protagonist player to corrupt politicians and/or climatologists in an attempt to get away with doing little to address environmental concerns.
  • A Sustainable Life is a blog dedicated to spreading information about environmental matters.
  • Green Humour is a series of cartoons, comics and illustrations on wildlife and the environment.
  • PGHENVIRONMENTAL is a blog regarding environmental matters.
  • Webecoist is a website dedicated to green innovation, environmental news and natural wonders.
  • One Green Planet is devoted to sustainable food, animal welfare issues, environmental protection, and cruelty-free/green living.
  • World Environment Day Poster by Panos09.
  • Green Planet 4 Kids is pretty much Exactly What It Says on the Tin - a website about looking after the environment, aimed at kids.

    Western Animation 
  • Amphibia has a very subtle one in its third season where King Andrias started turning the titular world into a Polluted Wasteland as he pillaged the resources he needed to build up his robot army.
  • Avatar: The Last Airbender has done this a couple of times.
    • In "The Winter Solstice", the Gaang met an angry forest spirit named Hei Bai, who rampaged through a village every night as revenge for the destruction of his forest (though the villagers weren't even responsible).
    • "The Painted Lady" also counts, but it's a little different from the norm in that no one needs to learn the lesson. They arrive at a polluted town, but it's from the army factory upstream, so it's neither the townspeople's fault nor can they do anything about it until Team Avatar comes along. We see the effects on the town (sickness, warped wildlife), and the effects after clean up, and that's enough.
    • "The Puppetmaster" actually features a subversion of a standard Green Aesop. The Gaang comes to a town where people keep vanishing every month during the full moon. The kids immediately assume that the townspeople did something to anger the spirits by hurting the environment, but they can't find anything environmentally unfriendly. Eventually, they drop the idea just before finding out who was really kidnapping the townspeople.
  • The Babaloos On Vacation episode “Save The Beach” has one about littering, with the Babaloos finding the beach covered in trash and having to clean it up.
  • Captain Planet, obviously. At least one episode had the Monster of the Week pollute the area for no reason other than to be a jerk, apparently.
  • Razzberry Jazzberry Jam: “Jazzberries Unplugged” has an electricity-related one, although it’s not exactly clear whether the message is about not wasting electricity or about using green energy sources.
  • Thunderbirds Are Go frequently mentions how harmful, non-renewable forms of energy have become obsolete in favour of green energy, because in 2060 that's how the world is. Specific episodes show oil rigs being shut down and turned into solar farms, technology which allows solar energy to be beamed down from space, massive machines that filter and clean the air of pollution and nuclear mines being shut down.
  • An episode of Disney's The Legend of Tarzan had this with Tarzan having to deal with a man who wanted to bulldoze the jungle for its trees. This causes a virus to be released from the ground, infecting the workmen and the man's daughter, and one of the ingredients for the antidote turns out to be a flower which was destroyed by the bulldozers. Fortunately, it turns out the man's daughter picked one, so everyone's saved. The episode ends with seeds from that flower being replanted and everyone learning to never mess with the jungle.
  • The Simpsons have had a lot of Green Aesops over the years, including in The Movie. Usually subverted, but almost always with a bit of a point to them as well.
    • One of the episodes that deconstructs this Aesop is "The Frying Game". Homer has to take care of an endangered bug he found in the backyard that's going extinct naturally, due to the fact that it screams incessantly, will die without constant reassurance and is sexually attracted to fire ("Are you sure God doesn't want it to be dead?"). It makes the intriguing argument that humans preventing animals from going extinct naturally via natural selection can be just as disruptive as driving a species to extinction via hunting, pollution, or habitat loss. Then it naturally forgets about the message for the second half of the episode. Of course, given the minuscule likelihood of an inherently Too Stupid To Live creature evolving, and the incredibly long timespan over which natural selection naturally occurs, it would just have turned into a Space Whale Aesop anyway.
    • Word of God says the Green Aesop of "Trash of the Titans", as Homer becomes Springfield's sanitation commissioner and messes Springfield up so horribly that the town is moved 5 miles away, was entirely unintentional.
  • The entire over reaching plot of Insektors.
  • The main theme in MeteoHeroes is about teaching ecology and respect for nature.
  • There have been a couple of episodes of Sushi Pack with this aesop, although it's usually secondary to the actual plot. The straightest example is the episode "Lights Out," where, because one town wasted water and electricity, power went out all over the world (and jolting one power station back to life was enough to bring power back to the whole world).
  • Several episodes of the original (1973-1974) Superfriends had environmentalist themes, including "Dr. Pelagian's War", "Too Hot To Handle" and "The Watermen". Granted this was during the energy crisis of the 1970s and environmentalism had just started to take place, it could count as a Trope Maker.
  • Sonic the Hedgehog cartoons:
    • Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog had a few of these in its "Sonic Sez" segments. The one in "Momma Robotnik's Birthday" involves Sonic explain why trees are good for the environment and advise the viewers to plant some if they live in the city. The ones in "Sonic Gets Thrashed" and "Honey, I Shrunk the Hedgehog" involve Sonic explain to the viewers how trash can add up based on their actions, and encourage them to recycle.
    • Sonic the Hedgehog (SatAM) pointed out that Robotnik was evil because he misused technology (some of which he stole and perverted — the Roboticizer was originally designed to allow elderly and terminally ill people to live longer) — not because technology is inherently bad.
  • This is the shtick of Widget the World Watcher, a cartoon about a shape-shifting alien who comes to Earth to teach the locals to preserve the environment, and ends up protecting it from a number of aliens and other villains who want to steal/exploit Earth's resources.
  • The plot of Barbie Presents Thumbelina involves the lesson that even little people (both literally with the Twillerbees and figuratively with the young girl Makena) can help the environment.
  • The Smoggies (also known as Stop The Smoggies) was a late eighties cartoon show made in Canada with a Green Aesop or two in every episode. The show features the Suntots, who utilize clean power and live in harmony with the animals of the island. They constantly thwart the plans of the Smoggies, three humans who arrived on a polluting ship in search of treasure and eternal life. And of course, the Suntots do not share the secrets of their clean energy with anyone else.
    • The "Smoggies" were not interested in the Suntots' technology, only in finding the "Magic Coral of Youth", which was supposedly the source of the Suntots' youthful appearance, but they claim doesn't exist; so either the Suntots were JerkAsses for not sharing, or the humans were Too Dumb to Live for chasing after something totally mythical. (The point seemed to be that living in a clean world was what kept the Suntots young, but the Smoggies were incapable of realising that, so assumed it must be magic. This was not clearly stated, however.)
  • Gargoyles had a moral about saving the rainforest in the Guatemala episode. However, Eliza points out that the humans do need SOME trees, but the native clan of gargoyles brush her off. Her point is not brought up again in the episode.
    • Worth noting that in Real Life rainforests aren't being cut down to make lumber, but to make space for farming, which is extremely short sighted, since rainforest soil is extremely poor due to all those trees, which have sucked most of the nutrients from the surface soil long ago. In fact lumber is one of the major reasons for preserving the rain forests! You can't cut down trees from farmland.
    • However, the episode ends with the Mayan Clan acknowledging that deforestation is a necessary evil, and coming up with an acceptable solution: growing a rainforest on Avalon
  • Rocko's Modern Life had an episode called "Zanzibar" that was basically their Green Aesop episode. Thankfully it was one of their better episodes because they delivered the aesop with lavish musical numbers! Hit it!
    • R-E-C-Y-C-L-E, recycle!/C-O-N-S-E-R-V-E, conseeeeeerve!/Don't you P-O-L-L-U-T-E/Pollute the land or sky or sea/Or else you're gonna get what you deseeeeerve!
  • Futurama has done a number of these, including: "A Big Pile of Garbage" (pollution), "The Problem with Popplers" (vegetarianism, won an Environmental Media Award), "The Birdbot Ice-Catraz" (oil spills), "Crimes of the Hot" (global warming), "The Futurama Holiday Spectacular" (deforestation, petroleum depletion, and honeybee deaths), and the movie "Into the Wild Green Yonder" (land development). However, the morals usually take a backseat to comedy.
  • Danny Phantom had a big one in "Urban Jungle." Remember, kids, be nice to nature, or giant plant ghosts will turn you into chlorophyll zombies and feed you to nature! (Although to be fair, the show pulls this off very rarely, especially given Sam's personality.) Arguably averted halfway through when the episode starts focusing on Danny's New Super Power. Not to mention none of the main characters learned a lesson in the end, the Aesop just trailed off.
  • There was an episode of He-Man and the Masters of the Universe (1983) where Skeletor gave He-Man amnesia and sent him to another world that was being polluted by an evil purple rabbit. The entire planet looked like it was ripped off from Dr. Seuss.
  • The Super Hero Squad Show did a global warming one that involved one of Doom's machines melting the Artic ice cap when the self destruct was pushed complete with Flat Man the Ben Stein sounding arguer that global warming was false even when he was up to his neck in water from the ice cap as it flooded the city and fixed by ice man.
  • The Man Who Planted Trees is a Canadian animated film adaptation of a powerful story of a shepherd's lonely resolve to reforest a desolate and despoiled valley over decades and he succeeds completely.
    • Most of Fredric Back's films are this.
  • The Wombles had a mild version of this as its main premise, the titular characters dedicating themselves to tidying up Wimbledon Common and turning rubbish into gadgets. Mild as in it didn't go beyond 'littering is bad, recycling is good'.
  • Yogi's Ark Lark revolves around Yogi Bear and his friends travelling around the world in a flying Noah's Ark to find "the perfect place" free of pollution, before realising that they should work to clean up their own homes instead of trying to escape the mess. Downplayed in the spin-off show Yogi's Gang - while there were three episodes dealing with waste, litter and smog, the others were dedicated to other vices such as envy, bigotry and selfishness.
  • SpongeBob SquarePants' had a two-minute short called "The Endless Summer", which was originally made for Earth to America, and later a half-hour special called "SpongeBob's Last Stand", which was about him and Patrick doing everything they could to stop a super highway from being built through Jellyfish Fields. Everyone approves of the project and no sooner was the pavement put down that the grass dies and the air becomes dingy. Also, SpongeBob's livelihood is ruined since the highway baricades the Krusty Krab restaurant. Just as Mr. Krabs is about to shut down his restaurant and give Plankton the secret recipe, a swarm of jellyfish, being hardy and adaptable animals, and with Jellyfish Fields gone, they need to find a new home and become descend on Bikini Bottom and become a major nuisance.
  • Toxic Crusaders - The Crusaders fight against Apocalypse Inc, evil cockroach-like extraterrestrials from the planet Smogula, who were polluting the Earth so they could survive long enough to conquer it.
  • Galaxy Rangers seemed inordinately fond of this trope for a cartoon done in The '80s. "Progress," "In Sheep's Clothing," "Space Moby" (with an Affectionate Parody of Greenpeace), "Mistwalker," "Natural Balance," and "Marshmallow Trees" used it blatantly, while other episodes made reference to responsible and irresponsible corporate and agricultural practices.
  • The entire purpose of The Little Flying Bears is to alert children to the harmful effects of pollution and fires, as well as the important role of the ecosystem.
  • Animaniacs, of all shows, pulled off an entire episode of Green Aesops in Episode 23. Every one of the shorts in that episode involved an environmental message in some way:
    • "Be Careful What You Eat" was a song about the ridiculous lists of preservatives and artificial ingredients in junk food.
    • "Up the Crazy River" had Buttons and Mindy witness the destruction of the Amazon.
    • "Ta Da Dump" had the Goodfeathers get trapped in a 6-pack ring.
    • And of course, the Wheel of Morality hung a giant lampshade on the Aesop with a fractured quote from "Blowin' in the Wind". ("The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind, except in New Jersey, where what's blowin' in the wind smells funny.")
    • "A Very Very Very Very Special Show" in episode 86 parodies this by having the Warners talk to the viewer about how to stay green in order to win an award. Once the award goes to another show, the Warners take back everything they just said and go back to their environmentally-unfriendly ways.
  • Parodied on Jimmy Two-Shoes. In the Season 2 episode "Going Green", an Identical Stranger of Beezy poses as him in order to pass a number of environmental protection laws, much to the horror of Lucius, who likes having Miseryville as polluted as possible. Ultimately, no lesson is learned in the end (for both characters and viewers), and Miseryville returns to its usually low standards.
  • Averted in Slacker Cats when Buckley and Eddie decide to save the woods where the humans building new houses because that's where the cats poop. Later they forget about it and ultimately fail to save it.
  • Occurs sometimes in Tiny Toon Adventures. There's the episodes with Plucky's Secret Identity "The Toxic Revenger" (a Toxic Avenger parody), and there's a whole show dedicated to pollution and how to deal with it. There's also 2 episodes that deal with the evil Gotcha Grabmore, who makes coats and beauty products out of live animals.
  • The My Little Pony Tales episode "Who's Responsible?" featured a local river literally being clogged with garbage and causing a flood. When the girls recognized garbage that they'd carelessly discarded earlier while searching for whoever was dumping garbage, they quickly got the answer to the eponymous question: everyone is responsible for the environment.
  • The Raccoons frequently ran with this. Perhaps the most effective Green Aesop comes in the penultimate episode, where a treasured fishing hole is ruined by illegally-dumped toxic waste, and it's explained that the pond may never return to normal.
  • Thomas & Friends, "Henry's Forest": A storm devastates a glen where Henry drives through, and he is visibly shaken by the disaster. It's one of the more positive examples, as the fallen timber is used to make things; and the other engines help replant the trees that were lost. It's a nicely subtle use of this trope, and a positive moment for Henry.
  • National Film Board of Canada: The short films Blowhard (ala fire-breathing dragons), The Energy Carol and Carface (to the song Que Sera, Sera).
  • The Mondo TV adaptation of The Trash Pack softens down the grossness of the toyline, instead replacing the trashiness with an anti-littering campaign. Poorly discarded trash becomes a Trashie, and one of the main goals of the Trashies is to take down Mr. Binner, one of the worst litterbugs in the city. On the contrast, the dump is surprisingly well-organized and less dump-like than expected.
  • On Little Princess, "I Want to Recycle" has one about recycling and about not wasting things in general.
  • Several episodes of Babar are based around this premise including the idea that hunting animals is cruel (the first season's arc, ending with "Babar's Triumph"), polluting the environment (episode "King Tuttle's Vote"), hunting animals again but this time from the already Civilized Animals (episode "The Unsalted Sea Serpent") and others.
  • Circle Square had the episode "Green Island" was about this trope, with Alba the owl, Tufty the owl's mother, having a crisis of conscience over climate change and she went around the island trying to fix things. However, while it attempted to deliver An Aesop, it became a Lost Aesop to its target audience of pre-schoolers.
  • In "Crystal and King Benefit Concert" from Dinosaur Train, said concert is held as a means of spreading the word that the Big Pond is being overfished, resulting in an over-abundance of small fish, due to the larger fish having been fished too much. Fortunately, there's still enough left to correct the situation, so long as everyone gets the word.
  • The main purpose behind Fishtronaut, is to teach kids about animals and how to protect the environment.
  • The Goof Troop episode "Goof of the People" has one, though it's presented as a Space Whale Aesop for laughs. So don't pollute or you'll turn into a corrupt sludge monster.
  • The Ready Jet Go! episode "Who Messed Up the Treehouse?" has a lesson that serves as this, saying that we should try to keep the Earth clean.
  • Every episode of Gisele and the Green Team is about protecting the environment and animals in some way.
  • The 13 episode long and barely remembered The New Adventures of Speed Racer had a strong environmental theme. Speed Racer could travel between the present and a horrible, polluted future full of mutants, purchasable clean air, and desolate wastelands that are considered a death sentence to enter. Eventually Speed Racer figures out the one event in the present that would cause the polluted future and stops it.
  • The New World of the Gnomes, a retelling of The World of David the Gnome, features David and his nephew Tomte as they travel the world to save animals and preserve nature as it is endangered by problems of modern-day pollution and environmental dangers, all the while antagonized by the trolls.
  • Kaeloo takes this to parody levels in Episode 14. Kaeloo tries to convince everyone that if they aren't green, the planet could get destroyed. She ends up forcing Quack Quack to give up his Trademark Favorite Food, yogurt, and makes him eat a substitute called "org-yurt" which is organic and comes in environment-friendly containers, despite the fact that it tastes so bad that he vomits. When he vomits, she punishes him for "wasting food". She also beats up Mr. Cat and Stumpy and throws them in a nearby dumpster just because they dropped a small piece of paper on the ground, and "littering is bad".
  • Many episodes of Rainbow Rangers are about protecting the environment or preserving Earth's natural beauty.
  • On Doc McStuffins, the "Toyarctic" starts to melt down after the Wicked King installs a lot of fancy new robotic technology in McStuffinsville Toy Hospital in "Arctic Rescue: The Great McStuffins Meltdown." It's discovered that the power cable that carries the load for McStuffinsville, which terminates in the arctic, is carrying twenty times the normal load, resulting in it massively overheating. It is unplugged temporarily to stop the situation and eventually solar panels are installed at the hospital. Everyone learns a lesson both about how what they do can affect the environment around them, as well as one about technology not being able to replace good old-fashioned doctoring care.
  • Beast Machines is something of a Deconstruction of this trope. The conflict between technology and nature is a major theme, Megatron basically wants to destroy any and all organic environments, and the heroes wield the power of nature to defend it, but the whole concept is treated with a great deal more nuance and depth than most examples; while Megatron is undeniably evil, that doesn't discredit the many benefits of technological progress, and the fact that Nature Is Not Nice is repeatedly called out. A major point of Character Development is the protagonists realizing that they are meant to create balance between the natural and industrial worlds, and that one without the other just creates more suffering.
  • 101 Dalmatians: The Series: The episode "Oozy Does It" centers around Cruella dumping toxic waste from her jeans factory into Hiccup Hole, leading to the pup's favorite swimming spot being contaminated and them trying to teach Cruella to be kinder to the environment.
  • In The Crumpets episode "Bulles de palme", the Crumpet kids learn about the devastating effects of palm oil harvests.
  • "Ready, Set, Hike!" from Mack & Moxy has an aesop that national parks must be protected and preserved so that everyone today and in the future can enjoy the beauty and joy of nature.


Alternative Title(s): Green Moral

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What a Gift

While in Montana, Big Bird sings about respecting nature and taking care of it.

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