The Last Winter

[first lines]

Marketing Video:
Alaska. Vast wilderness of the north. Land of great natural beauty and diversity. This is rugged county, land of black gold. Alaska's North Slope has been producing oil out of Prudhoe Bay since 1968, delivering to refineries and ports 800 miles to the south through the great Trans-Alaskan pipeline. But another northern region known as the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge has remained untapped. Only once have prospectors gained access to this barren landscape. In 1986, KIK Corporation, a partnership between native and business interests, petitioned the drilling of a test well. The results of the drilling has been a carefully guarded secret ever since. With only a solitary white box marking the footprint where the rig once stood. And now at last, after an historic vote in Congress, the KIK well will reveal her secrets, and North Industries will be there. Working in concert with environmental experts, North Industries will send advanced teams to map the area and determine the strategic drilling locations. Ice roads will be constructed to transport rigs, and drill sites and pipelines will be in operation within the decade. One step closer to energy independence. We have got the vision, the experience, the know how. North Industries, trust, risk, results.

James Hoffman:
[from his journal] Empathy with the land. This we learn in childhood. The land has changed. The biosphere turned; has become unfamiliar and erratic. I would say eventual, but nature is indifferent to us. We fight for our survival, not nature's. There's a fierceness in the world that we never felt before. Something is being unleashed in the softening permafrost. Why do we despise the world that gave us life? Why wouldn't the world survive us, like any organism survives a virus. The world that we grew up in is changed forever. There is no way home. Is there something beyond science that is happening out here? What if the very thing we were here to pull out of the ground were to rise willingly - confront us. What would that look like? What if this is the last winter, before the collapse? And hope dies.