If unconditional, unthinking human love was capable of saving a species, pandas wouldn't just have been pulled back from brink, they'd be outbreeding us by some distance.
Why all this unrequited love? I can only think that the panda's black and white fluffiness makes it like some sort of chicken soup for the soul. And apparently New Zealand is about to order two big bowls of it.
Prime Minister John Key, in his enormous wisdom, has declared it would be nice a idea if we taxpayers shelled out around $1.3 million a year to lease a pair of pandas - you can't buy them - from China, perhaps in exchange for a kiwi or two. That $1.3 million year sounds like quite a lot of money really when what you're effectively doing is looking after the pandas on China's behalf. Isn't that like asking the neighbour's teenager to babysit your kids and then charging the babysitter for the privilege?
But on top of the price-gouging on the rental, there is the cost of building an enclosure for the giant furballs at Wellington Zoo. This could, depending on who is doing the talking, run to somewhere between $10 million and $100 million. The yearly upkeep, to make sure these finicky eaters have the right kind of bamboo, may well run to hundreds of thousands or perhaps millions more.
This is a guess, but won't that make these two pandas, who will have only temporary visas, the most expensive beneficiaries in the country? Will there be any means testing? Will they be expected to do more than sit around in their state house eating? I'm pretty sure National Party policy will demand it.
So why, then, is our esteemed leader proposing spending such an enormous amount of our money on a couple of fluffy bludgers?
Well to give the man his due, it doesn't seem to be because he wants to do something as namby-pamby as save them from extinction. Key wants pandas because pandas are apparently proven tourism winners. "Pandas do have a remarkable attraction," he told the Herald. "You would be amazed how many people go to the cities that get them, and that's why they are fiercely sought-after." Yes it's true, I am amazed.
Key's point may well be true, of course, but I wasn't actually aware that this country was lacking in tourism attractions. Have we run out of mountains, good clear air, lovely lakes, hiking tracks in the bush, Lord of the Rings locations, beaches, pricey vineyards, bungy jumps or actual fauna of our own?
I shouldn't think so. But hey, the more the merrier. Pandas, much like gorse, rabbits and didymo, might not be "100 per cent pure New Zealand", but if we temporarily have our own pandas, then there will only be Wellington and 28 other zoos around the world competing for the dollar of the panda-obsessed masses. I'm not at all worried about Wellington's examples being at the end of up to 30 hours on a plane, or that the 28 other zoos are much, much closer to very large populations in American, Europe and Asia. I mean I'd certainly fly from London to see pandas in Wellington, wouldn't you?
In fact, so convinced am I of the tourist-pulling power of other people's stuff, I actually think these pandas will prove to be the start of a whole new strategy for the country, an idea which I will call "Panda Economics".
The first thing we need to do is identify other animals, structures, people, buildings and even ideas that we can - at vast expense to the taxpayer - rent or borrow (I won't say steal) from other countries to help boost our poor standard of homegrown tourist attractions so they we may attract more visitors to our, at present, undeserving shores.
Firstly, we should take the opportunity to strike another blow for world conservation by building an enclosure for then leasing the rarest, most endangered thing in the world. In fact, it is one of a kind: Donald Trump's hair. Imagine it living in Wellington Zoo in the cage next to the pandas! Imagine how people would come from far and wide to see it. Actually I know Wellington, to quote Key, is a "dying city", but we should give some thought to Panda Economics generating tourist interest in other unloved parts of the country like Palmerston North and Hamilton. The notion of visiting Donald Trump's hair in Hamilton is the sort of thing that should win me a prize, or a least a thank you note from the PM.
Other possibilities for massive tourist attractions we should lease and have transported to New Zealand, at great expense to taxpayers to bring in tourists, are the large hadron collider from Cern, Graceland from Memphis, Alcatraz from San Francisco and the Eiffel Tower from Paris (my prize should be getting bigger). There's also the possibility of us raising the Titantic and then - live on global TV of course - sinking it again in Matauri Bay next to the Rainbow Warrior (though diving tourism isn't really much of dollar-generator, if I'm honest).
But I think the single best idea if we want to spend enormous amounts of public money to attract tourists is for New Zealand to lease the British royal family.
Yes, they just sit there eating expensive food and looking fetching, but so do pandas. Yes, they're not very well-adapted to surviving in the modern world, but neither are pandas. Yes, they're almost completely pointless, but then so are pandas.
Think of it: if we put the royal family in Wellington too, we could have the changing of the guards down by Te Papa, Prince Charles could hug trees at Zealandia and the Queen could have the pandas over for garden parties at Government House.
Now I can hear the haters and doubters damning my Panda Economics as a mad extravagance that is bound to fail. I can hear the haters and doubters saying "instead of spending money on saving pandas or Donald Trump's hair, why don't we reverse National's budget and staff cuts to the Department of Conservation and spend the Panda money on saving our own endangered fauna?"
But I'm with the visionary John Key, pandas are the future.
