Image © iStock - PeterHermesFurianThat shock is part of a broader reckoning over Alaska’s energy future. Yet Alaska spends more on energy per capita than any other state, making it vulnerable when the system that oil built begins to crack. “We are an oil state,” says Phil Wight, an environmental historian at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. With the state’s backing and the federal government’s enthusiasm for new leases, Alaska’s next wave of extraction is taking shape. “Energy independence is probably the number one way rural Alaska — and rural America — can weather all of these impacts,” Karankevich says.