THE PROBLEMS WITH PANDAS
INTRODUCTION:
There is a saying “violence never solves
anything” and it's often brought out after it's been proved wrong. This is generally because anybody who is old
enough to have the authority to say it isn't going to be present when the fight
actually starts. Ever.
It might have crossed your mind to wonder
exactly why a post on wildlife conservation opens with such a strange paragraph
[1]
Usually the literature from the “save the
planet” people launch with some statistic or fact about humans which is meant
to wake you up to the reality that humanity is very evil and takes a cartoonish
delight in destroying the planet.
If you read on further about how everyone is
killing everything it's easy to see that, were it not for the maxim of violence
not solving anything, all the other species of the world would have banded
together and put a stop to humanity long ago.
If you manage to make it through to the end
the final page is devoted to letting you know that by giving them money they
can help to save the Pandas.
I don't want anyone out there in the land of
Internet thinking that I'm picking on Greenpeace, The World Wildlife Fund or any
other such group because these organizations do an amazing job of keeping
things honest.
All that being said we can't go past the
fact that I grew up hearing
“Save the pandas! Save the pandas!” [2]
So why is it that 90% of the panda news is
yet another story about how the zookeepers are having trouble getting the giant
pandas to breed? [3]
It's easy enough to see why the panda gets
so much attention. they're cute, fluffy
and have apparently been in danger of dying out since forever ago, in other
words the perfect mascots. Now that I'm
older and being approached by people who are still after me to save them I
think it might be time to acknowledge that what we want from the Pandas is a
little bit of effort and perhaps a return on the investment. [4]
