BILL BENGE came to Moab in 1972 and got a job working for Tex McClatchy.  He later became Grand County’s county attorney and served in that office for almost 30 years.

Bill passed away in 2006 at the age of 60.

AN EXCERPT:   What we have here is an immense and startlingly new oil and gas field — nighttime evidence of an oil boom created by a technology called fracking. Those lights are rigs, hundreds of them, lit at night, or fiery flares of natural gas. One hundred fifty oil companies, big ones, little ones, wildcatters, have flooded this region, drilling up to eight new wells every day on what is called the Bakken formation. Altogether, they are now producing 660,000 barrels a day, double the output two years ago, so that in no time at all, North Dakota is now the second largest oil producing state in America. Only Texas produces more, and those lights are a sign that this region is now on fire … to a disturbing degree — literally.

CLICK THE IMAGE BELOW TO READ THE STORY…

http://www.npr.org/blogs/krulwich/2013/01/16/169511949/a-mysterious-patch-of-light-shows-up-in-the-north-dakota-dark

from RICHARD ATTENBOROUGH:

“We are a plague on the Earth. It’s coming home to roost over the next 50 years or so. It’s not just climate change; it’s sheer space, places to grow food for this enormous horde. Either we limit our population growth or the natural world will do it for us, and the natural world is doing it for us right now,” Sir David Attenborough told the Radio Times. (The Telegraph)

CLICK THE IMAGE TO READ THE STORY