The Guardian Environment

• China’s stranglehold on rare earths must be ended, says hopeful supplier to EU

  Rafael Moreno, whose company has opened demo plant in Brazil, says market is ‘nervous’ as Trump-Xi summit looms

  The head of a mining company hoping to supply the EU with rare earths in two years’ time has said it is “paramount” to end China’s stranglehold on the supply of the raw materials used in everything from cars to wind turbines and military jets.

  As Donald Trump and China’s president, Xi Jinping, prepare to meet on Thursday in their second summit of the year, Rafael Moreno said it was also “imperative” that they do a deal for Beijing to ease up, once again, on its threat to ban exports of rare earths.

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• Burning forests, emptying rivers, €180bn in damage: Europe’s politicians face reckoning after ‘summer of truth’

  Amid record-shattering heatwaves and popular demand for climate action, why are politicians often timid or in denial?

  It was, according to the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, the “summer of truth”. Climate chaos ripped through Europe and the northern hemisphere, sending heat records tumbling, scorching crops in the fields, burning forests, emptying rivers and reservoirs, warping train tracks, melting roads and killing about 35,000 people in Europe alone.

  The EU has estimated the damage at about €180bn, and the full bill is yet to arrive: harvests have been depleted, which will probably raise food price inflation, and expensive repairs to infrastructure have only just begun.

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• Before-and-after images show effects of rain in drought-hit England and Wales

  Much of the UK is still officially in drought after its hottest summer on record, but grasslands are slowly recovering their colour

  The landscapes of southern England and Wales are slowly regaining their colour after this summer’s extreme heat.

  The UK’s hottest summer on record left the south of the country dried out and brown, making the impact of the drought particularly visual.

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• How to flood-proof your home: from water-thirsty plants to deflated footballs

  After summer’s heatwaves, prepare for winter of storms and heavy rain, with millions of UK homes at risk of flooding

  The accelerating climate crisis and this year’s record-breaking El Niño mean that, although the summer’s heatwaves are still fresh in the memory, households in the UK are already being told to prepare for a potentially destructive winter of storms and heavy rain – leaving millions of homes at risk of flooding.

  Government action is needed to improve flood defences and build reliance on a national and regional level. But with the UK’s flood season just weeks away, the Guardian spoke to experts to find out what action communities and individuals can take to make their neighbourhoods and homes more resilient, from self-closing airbricks to deflated children’s footballs.

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• Spider season! Ten species you’ll see scuttling across Britain’s carpets and lawns this autumn

  The world is suddenly full of webs and hairy legs. But why? And what do they belong to? Meet the spiders you’re most likely to encounter, from cardinals to false wolves

  Summer is at an end, and suddenly spiders seem to be everywhere – in your house, in your garden, in your hair. Fresh webs hang from doorways, walls, shrubs and fence posts, creating invisible obstacle courses. Where do all these spiders come from, what kind are they and what, if anything, should we do about them?

  The short answer to the question “Why are there so many more spiders at this time of year?” is: there aren’t. They are just more obvious. Dave Clarke, an ectotherm (“cold-blooded” animal) specialist at the Zoological Society of London, says: “There are more spiders around in the spring, because that’s when they hatch from their egg sacs, and there are hundreds of babies in each egg sac. But they’re small and not very obvious. They grow up during the summer and, at this time of year, they reach their maximum size.” Their webs are also correspondingly larger.

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