In yesterday’s Globe and Mail article “Hilary Mantel vs. ‘plastic’ Kate Middleton: We missed the point – and Mantel was right,” Kate Taylor reports that author Hilary Mantel “comes to the conclusion that royals are like pandas, fun to look at but unnecessary.”

Are pandas unnecessary?

A dangerous line to tread. Is fiction necessary? Poetry? Necessary to whom? For what?

Biodiversity is essential for the health of the planet and all living organisms. We need pandas, authors, princesses and journalists and more, so much more, to sustain and encourage our intellectual and emotional curiosity, our appreciation of the different and unusual and beautiful and unbeautiful.

A world without pandas? Oh please no! What a sad world that would be.

Are humans necessary? To whom? For what?