Oil companies operating in the North Sea have been fined for oil spills on just seven occasions since 2000, even though 4,123 separate spills were recorded over the same period, the Department of Energy and Climate Change (Decc) has confirmed.

The disclosure came as Decc said on Thursday that the government had offered a "record-breaking" 167 new licences to oil and gas companies seeking to drill in the North Sea. A further 61 "blocks", or licences, are under environmental assessment.

Total fines resulting from prosecutions between 2000 and 2011 came to just £74,000 and no single oil company had to pay more than £20,000.

Scientists estimate that to maintain a 50% chance of averting catastrophic climate change the global average temperature must not increase by more than 2°C by 2050. This equates to a global greenhouse gas concentration of 450 parts per million of carbon dioxide equivalent, or 565 gigatonnes of carbon emissions. But the global carbon emissions locked into fossil–fuels forecasted for combustion until 2050 exceed this allowance five fold.

This has been emphasised by the International Energy Agency, who recently stated that the door to staying below 2°C is closing. Paradoxically, while a sizeable proportion of the world is addicted to fossil–fuels that exacerbate climate change, over 1.3 billion people currently have no access to electricity—disproportionately those who are poor and from developing countries.

A last-minute legal challenge has dealt a fresh blow to the government's increasingly troubled cull of badgers in England, the Observer has learned.

The Badger Trust's lawyers have served a 16-page legal letter on Natural England, the government agency licensing the culling, which could halt the cull. "The costs of the cull are soaring out of control, with little benefit in sight for farmers and major risks posed for members of the public in the cull areas," said Gwendolen Morgan, the trust's solicitor at Bindmans LLP. "It is time for the government to reconsider."

The delayed cull now appears at serious risk of being abandoned, for this year at least. On Thursday it was revealed that the number of badgers in the cull areas was up to twice initial estimates, presenting a much greater challenge to farmers already said to be deeply concerned by rising costs and complications.

An environmental group wants two major utility companies to cleanup their unlined coal ash ponds and wants the state to make them do it.

The Southern Environmental Law Center filed a request asking the N.C. Environmental Management Commission, the state agency responsible for adopting rules to protect the state’s air and water, to make a ruling that would require Duke Energy and Progress Energy to cleanup groundwater they say has been contaminated by old, unlined coal ash lagoons at 14 coal-fired power plants.