Ninety oil workers have been evacuated from a North Sea rig as engineers fight to control a huge build-up of pressure in a well that may have the potential to blow up the platform. Norwegian company Statoil partly evacuated the Gullfaks oil rig off on May 20 following unexpected fluctuations in pressure. The company said all 89 non-essential workers were taken off the rig as a precaution, while the other remained to try to normalize pressure. Pressure levels remain unstable a week later. Workers are pumping cement into the well in an operation similar to that being attempted by BP in the Gulf of Mexico.

Even as the disaster unfolds in the Gulf of Mexico, lawyers for BP and federal regulators are working to settle a civil suit the government brought in connection with the 2006 pipeline spills in Alaska's Prudhoe Bay oilfield. In papers BP and government lawyers jointly filed in US District Court in Anchorage recently, the two sides said they had "conducted extensive settlement discussions including...exchanging several drafts of various settlement constructs." Judge John Sedwick granted a motion to extend deadlines related to expert witness disclosure and discovery until near the end of the year.

The American Power Act, a bill proposing a carbon trading system for reducing US greenhouse gas emissions, was introduced May 12 in the Senate. Written by Senators John Kerry (D-MA) and Joe Lieberman (I-CT), the bill aims to reduce emissions by 17% in 2020 and by over 80% in 2050. President Barack Obama endorsed the bill, saying, "This legislation will put America on the path to a clean energy economy that will create American jobs building the solar panels, wind blades and the car batteries of the future. It will strengthen our national security by beginning to break our dependence on foreign oil. And it will protect our environment for our children and grandchildren."

On May 7, Bolivia's President Evo Morales arrived at the UN in New York City to personally present Secretary General Ban Ki-moon with the conclusions of the World People's Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of the Mother Earth (CMPCC), which was held in Cochabamba from April 20-22. Some 30,000 people from over 150 countries attended the CMPCC, which sought to bring governments and civil society groups together to work together to address climate change.

In the wake of the Louisiana oil spill, Florida's Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Orlando) called for President Barack Obama to reverse his recent executive order to open up areas of the Gulf of Mexico to offshore oil and gas exploration. Nelson also introduced legislation to stop exploration in the Gulf pending an investigation into the Deepwater Horizon incident. The bill would stop the Interior Department from developing a new five-year plan for Gulf drilling and exploration in the Outer Continental Shelf. "Stop the five-year plan on drilling on the offshore continental United States until we get to the bottom of this," he told CNN April 30. (Florida Today, May 1)

Bird conservationists fear the spreading Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico will affect not only local birdlife but migratory bird populations as far north as Alaska, and as far south as South America. The spill, now 100 miles long by 48 miles wide, is being pushed onshore by the prevailing southeast winds and is expected to hit the Louisiana's Chandeleur Islands imminently.

The World People's Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth (CMPCC) at the central Bolivian city of Cochabamba closed on Earth Day, April 22, issuing several resolutions, including: that the UN adopt a Universal Declaration on the Rights of Mother Earth; that an International Committee be organized to hold a global referendum on climate change on Earth Day 2011; that the industrialized nations provide annual financing equivalent to 6% of their GDP to confront climate change in the developing world; and that an International Tribunal on Environmental and Climate Justice be created, with its seat in Bolivia. The conference called for a new global organization to press for these demands, tentatively dubbed the World Movement for Mother Earth—or, by its Spanish acronym, MAMA-Tierra.

The Obama administration has delayed release of its new Nuclear Posture Review to at least the end of March, but anonymous officials widely quoted in the media say it will call for "dramatic reductions" in the US nuclear arsenal. Release of the NPR was originally slated for December, and the repeated postponements have sparked much speculation on possible meaningful steps towards the nuclear-free world that Obama set forth as a goal in his Prague speech last April. However, anonymous officials (almost certainly being authorized by the White House to float trial balloons to the press) also say the administration has ruled out pledging that the US will never initiate a nuclear first strike. (BBC News, AlJazeera, March 2; Global Security Newswire, March 1; NYT, Feb. 28)