Science Quote by Jim Fowler

Fowler reaches for the wallet because he knows the heart is a slower sell. Framing open space as an “economic” argument is a strategic concession to a political culture that treats nature as optional decoration unless it can justify itself on a balance sheet. The line is built like a pressure point: “most powerful” signals impatience with sentimental pleas, and “of all” quietly demotes ethics, beauty, and ecological responsibility to second-tier motivators. He’s not denying those values; he’s ranking what tends to win.

The tourism detail does double duty. Calling it “the number two industry” borrows the authority of a fun fact, the kind that survives committee hearings. It also reframes forests, coasts, and wildlife as infrastructure - not a luxury, but an asset class. Open space becomes a renewable resource for local economies: the scenery is the product, the public land is the factory floor, the visitors are the cash flow.

There’s an implicit warning, too. If landscapes are worth saving because they attract tourists, they can also be redesigned to please tourists: more access roads, more amenities, more “experiences” that chip away at the very openness being sold. Fowler’s context as a scientist matters here: he’s translating ecological interdependence into a language legislators reliably understand. It’s pragmatic rhetoric with a faintly grim subtext: in a system that struggles to price clean water or biodiversity, the easiest way to defend nature is to treat it like an industry before it’s treated like a memory.