Collateral Damage

It is axiomatic that war is hell, not only in terms of its immediate toll on human lives but also in terms of the enormous and inevitable environmental damage it causes. With war raging in Lebanon and Israel, the United Nations Environment Programme has expressed "grave concern" about an Exxon Valdez-scale oil spill on the Lebanese coast. The spill resulted from Israeli bombing of the Jiyyeh power station and has spread across 50 miles of coastline, slicking beaches and threatening a variety of Mediterranean wildlife, including endangered green turtles, whose eggs hatch in the area in July.