The History of the Future by Edward McPherson

Author:Edward McPherson
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781566894760
Publisher: Coffee House Press
Published: 2017-02-01T16:00:00+00:00

Chasing the Boundary: Boom and Bust on the High Prairie

Once again, the story begins with fire, some primeval attraction to light in the darkness. A time-lapse video looking down at the nighttime earth, courtesy of astronauts in the International Space Station spinning some 250 miles above. Civilization stretched out like campfires, cities shining in the dark, great webs of light marking our dubious progress across the dim globe: the golden Nile dangling down Egypt, glittering island flecks in the Philippine Sea, Italy and its boot, the Holy Land glowing against the black Mediterranean, the floodlit border between India and Pakistan. Meanwhile, unlit places hold their vast dignity: the Amazon basin, the steppes of Eurasia, the deserts of Africa, the south Indian Ocean. Green auroras play across the thermosphere. Lightning sparks the clouds. Across the United States roll the wide fields of the republic: the dazzling eastern seaboard, the dark of Appalachia, the twinkling townships gridding the plains. And there—to the west of the Great Lakes (blank in the night) and over the bright shoulder of Minneapolis–St. Paul—a strange bloom. Like a city but bigger, more diffuse. No central pinprick but countless tiny suns. A region smeared with light. Once you know what you’re looking for, you can’t miss it as the camera swoops over—but what is it? Nothing was there seven years ago. This is a new shining star of the north—the blazing rigs, equipment, settlements, and gas flares of the North Dakota Miracle, a.k.a. the Oil Patch, a.k.a. Kuwait on the Prairie, a.k.a. the Bakken Oil Boom, U.S.A.

The phenomenon had been covered in the news, by the networks, on the radio, and in the glossies: North Dakota was a new kind of promised land. This was no ordinary boom. In 2013, North Dakota’s real gross domestic product grew 9.7 percent, easily beating the national average (1.8 percent). Meanwhile, the personal income of a North Dakotan rose 7.6 percent, the greatest increase in the country—a distinction the state has boasted for six of the past seven years. Per capita personal income was second highest in the nation, after Connecticut. This wasn’t just a few fat cats getting richer—there were jobs. North Dakota had the lowest unemployment rate for the fifth year running, at 2.9 percent, and joblessness was even lower in the oil counties (at 1.6 percent). The national average was 7.4 percent. Taxes on oil and gas production had allowed the state to sock away $2 billion in savings.

And so the people came. In 2013, North Dakota was the fastest-growing state, increasing its population at more than four times the national average. Williams County, which includes the city of Williston, in the middle of the Bakken oil field, was the fastest-growing county in the country with a population of more than ten thousand. And while the country as a whole is aging, North Dakota is growing younger, thanks to an influx of twenty-and thirtysomethings migrating to the state. In fact, North Dakota is changing so quickly that the director of the U.

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