In addition to common business challenges like financing and securing customer contracts, the group has spent the better part of the last ten years navigating the National Environmental Policy Act, which means showing why a refinery won't negatively affect everything from flowers and shrubs to endangered species of animals.

FORBES: Not In My Backyard

When gray wolves were listed under the Endangered Species Act in 1974, Minnesota hosted one of the only remaining populations of the animals in the lower 48 states.

CNN: Minnesota wolves considered for delisting

If Ms Williams does not intend to induce human horror at a pending bestial Armageddon, she at least invokes a future of earthly loneliness, where animals appear only as ceramic-hen butter dishes and endangered-species elastoplasts.

ECONOMIST: American fiction (2)