The Guardian

Humphrey Head, Cartmel Peninsula Tiny creatures, with remarkable jumping ability, dwell in the carboniferous limestone hills above Morecambe Bay

Dense vegetation alive with birdsong clings to the face of Humphrey Head. Gazing up at the gaping mouth of Edgar’s Arch, a blowhole in Cumbria’s highest limestone headland – and above a bushy beard of trees, shrubs and creepers – I forget to watch my feet. Result? I become stuck in one of the glutinous exiting channels that booby-trap Morecambe Bay’s shores.

Good Samaritans hoist me to my feet, “We’re on a weekend activity hen do,” says the one in the “Game Over” T-shirt. “Glad the tide’s out,” says the group’s instructor, her top labelled “Boss”. “Folk get mired down like mice in those traps with sticky floors. Then the tide sneaks in.”

Environment secretary says EU must combat spread of Xylella fastidiosa by stopping high-risk species from crossing borders unchecked

Europe must implement greater protections against a disease that could threaten UK plants and trees, including oaks, the environment secretary Michael Gove has said.

The horticulture sector is also being urged to take action to prevent Xylella fastidiosa, which is having a devastating impact on plants such as olive trees in parts of mainland Europe, spreading to the UK.

George W Bush’s presidency never fully recovered from his botched handling of Hurricane Katrina. Barack Obama won re-election just days after Hurricane Sandy struck. So how can presidents respond effectively to natural disasters? And how has Donald Trump managed the response to Harvey and Irma?

Exclusive: New studies find microplastics in salt from the US, Europe and China, adding to evidence that plastic pollution is pervasive in the environment

• We are living on a plastic planet. What does that mean for our health?

Sea salt around the world has been contaminated by plastic pollution, adding to experts’ fears that microplastics are becoming ubiquitous in the environment and finding their way into the food chain via the salt in our diets.

Following this week’s revelations in the Guardian about levels of plastic contamination in tap water, new studies have shown that tiny particles have been found in sea salt in the UK, France and Spain, as well as China and now the US.

Stag deers in London’s Richmond Park, elks in east China, and Bactrian deer in central Asia are among this week’s pick of images from the natural world

Our air, water and salt are contaminated by plastic and the impact on our health is unknown. While we wait for the findings, here are ways to reduce plastic use

• Sea salt around the world is contaminated by plastic, studies show

Tap water around the world is contaminated with tiny plastic fibres, the Guardian revealed this week, and other pilot studies have revealed microplastics in beer, sugar, salt and honey, as well as in seafood, in the air in cities and in homes. The impact on health of this apparently pervasive pollution is unknown, though microplastics do harm some marine life and scientists are calling for urgent research.

EU duties on Chinese solar modules are set to rise 30% above market levels signalling ‘huge negative effects’ for businesses

Europe’s solar industry has condemned an EU vote to impose another round of duties on Chinese imports, just weeks before a US trade panel is due to rule on similar tariffs.

A Brussels committee yesterday agreed to set minimum import duties for Chinese solar modules and cells that could price them up to 30% above market levels with “huge negative effects” for the industry, according to trade groups.

Milder floods that refill reservoirs are decreasing as severe floods become more common

It is well known that humans are causing the Earth to warm. We also know that a warmer atmosphere has more water vapor. Just like the air is more humid when it is warm, and less humid when cold. The more humid air leads to more intense precipitation and potentially more flooding. But how much change we will see is an open scientific question.

This question is made complex by the fact that flooding isn’t just about rain. It reflects a dependence on evaporation, rain, the ability of land and water management to handle water surges, and other factors. Fortunately, a very recent study out of Science Advances has helped advance our understanding of the confluence of global warming, intense rain and flooding.

An artist has given away part of his winnings to protest against BP’s role in climate change. The company’s money has helped an unfashionable artform, but what’s at stake is far more important

We can’t stop looking at human faces. Can’t stop being interested in ourselves, our species. The BP Portrait Award, whose annual exhibition of winners and strong contenders can be seen at the National Portrait Gallery until 24 September, is full of humanity. It is, perhaps, the most humanist art prize in the world, an art award that specifically celebrates the painted human image and looks for modern heirs to the profoundly compassionate tradition of portraiture that includes Rembrandt, Velázquez and Lucian Freud.

Yet it may be time to get over ourselves. Has the moment come to put nature before portraiture, and abolish this oil-tainted oil painting prize?

Exclusive: Winner of the BP young artist award at UK’s National Portrait Gallery says donation is a protest against his art being used to promote the oil company

• Is it time for the arts to start saying no to oil money?

A painter who won a prestigious British portrait award sponsored by BP has donated part of his winnings to Greenpeace in protest at his art being used to promote the image of the multinational oil company.

Henry Christian-Slane, an artist from New Zealand, won the BP young artist award at the National Portrait Gallery for a painting of his partner Gabi. The high profile prize, which was chosen out of 2,580 entries, came with £7,000 prize money, which was presented by BP’s chief executive Bob Dudley.

Project supported by WWF is likely to take many years and involves creation of nature reserve and restoration of forest

Wild tigers are to be reintroduced to Kazakhstan 70 years after they became extinct in the country.

The animals will be reintroduced in the Ili-Balkhash region in a project that involves the creation of a nature reserve and the restoration of a forest that is part of the animal’s historical range.

As more urban trees face the prospect of being felled – now at a rate of almost 60 a day – we asked Guardian readers to share their pictures of trees in their neighbourhoods. These are a few of our favourites

Akademgorodok is a science centre situated in a remote Siberian forest. Photographer Pablo Ortíz Monasterio gained access to marvel at its brightly coloured chemistry labs and nuclear particle accelerators

Petersfield, Hampshire Bags of picnic rubbish littered the lakeside, and rats were helping themselves to bread left for the ducks

After enduring weeks of overcast skies and squally showers, hordes of visitors had evidently spent the day at the heath, making the most of the long-awaited sunshine.

A confetti of carelessly discarded sweet and ice lolly wrappers littered the path to the 22-acre Heath Pond. The bins were overflowing with bottles, cans and fast food packaging, but rather than taking their rubbish home people had resorted to dumping bags of picnic detritus beside them.

Australia’s overall greenhouse gas emissions last financial year were the highest since 2011, despite the closure of the Hazelwood coal-fired power plant

Emissions from the electricity sector in the three months to June dropped by the biggest amount on record, as the effect of the Hazelwood coal-fired power station closure is seen for the first time in quarterly projections produced exclusively for the Guardian.

But even that drop wasn’t enough to stop Australia’s overall greenhouse gas emissions from continuing to rise. Emissions from almost every other sector – industrial energy, transport, industrial heat and agriculture – all rose. They are the highest levels seen since before the carbon tax was repealed, according to projections by consultants at Ndevr Environmental.

Joe Corré accuses multinational petrochemical company of ‘bully boy tactics’ to prevent legitimate protest against its fracking activities in the UK

An environmental campaigner is challenging the legality of a wide-ranging injunction obtained against protesters by a multinational firm that he criticised as being “draconian, anti-democratic and oppressive”.

Joe Corré accused petrochemical giant Ineos of using “disgusting bully boy tactics” against campaigners who want to protest against the firm’s fracking operations.

Northumberland coastline famed for Arctic terns and Atlantic puffins granted greater protection by Natural England

A stretch of coastline which is one of the most important sites in the UK for seabirds such as Arctic terns and Atlantic puffins has been given greater protection.

The newly-designated Northumberland marine special protected area (SPA) stretches 12 miles from the coast into the North Sea, covering an area larger than 120,000 football pitches, government conservation body Natural England said.

It came without warning, and without equivalent. Now a flash drought is fueling fires and hurting the lives of those who work the land

When Rick Kirn planted his 1,000 acres of spring wheat in May, there were no signs of a weather calamity on the horizon. Three months later, when he should have been harvesting and getting ready to sell his wheat, Kirn was staring out across vast cracked, gray, empty fields dotted with weeds and little patches of stunted wheat.

“It’s a total loss for me,” said Kirn, who operates a small family wheat farm on the Fort Peck Reservation, an area of north-eastern Montana that lies right in the heart of the extreme climactic episode. “There’s nothing to harvest.”

Government data reveals Tesco deducted administration costs from plastic bag sales, unlike other major supermarkets, angering senior MPs

Millions of pounds in administration costs were deducted from the charitable donations made by Tesco using funds generated from the plastic bag tax, government data has revealed. No other major supermarket made any such deductions, leading senior MPs to urge Tesco to follow their lead.

The 5p charge for plastic bags was introduced in England in October 2015 and has led to an 83% reduction in their use, equivalent to 9bn fewer bags. It is also credited with a drop by nearly half in plastic bags found littering beaches.

What would the world be like if we weren’t dependent on oil? Photographer Richard Allenby-Pratt imagines a deserted Dubai in which the wealthy have fled, leaving giraffes and zebras to wander the alien landscapes